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DOCTOR PASCAL 


BY 

EMILE ZOLA 


AUTHOR OF “THE DOWNFALL,” “THE EXPERIMENTAL 
NOVEL,” ETC. 


TRANSLATED BY 

MARY J. SERRANO 


IRcw |)ork 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 


London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd. 


1898 


A-' 


I 


All rights reserved 




'Z ^l\i 

3 

Co^j. 


Copyright, 1893, by 
CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY. 


Copyright, 1898, by 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 


First published elsewhere. Reprinted July, 1898. 



TWO COPIES RtCtlVED. 



THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, 
. RAHWAY, N. J. 


DOCTOR PASCAL 


I. 

In the heat of the glowing July afternoon, the 
room, with blinds carefully closed, was full of a 
great calm. From the three windows, through the 
cracks of the old wooden shutters, came only a few 
scattered sunbeams which, in the midst of the 
obscurity, made a soft brightness that bathed sur- 
rounding objects in a diffused and tender light. It 
was cool here in comparison with the overpowering 
heat that was felt outside, under the fierce rays of 
the sun that blazed upon the front of the house. 

Standing before the press which faced the win- 
dows, Dr. Pascal was looking for a paper that he 
had come in search of. With doors wide open, this 
immense press of carved oak, adorned with strong 
and handsome mountings of metal, dating from the 
last century, displayed within its capacious depths 
an extraordinary collection of papers and manu- 
scripts of all sorts, piled up in confusion and filling 
every shelf to overflowing. For more than thirty 
years the doctor had thrown into it every page he 
wrote, from brief notes to the complete texts of 


2 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


his great works on heredity. Thus it was that his 
searches here were not always easy. He rummaged 
patiently among the papers, and when he at last 
found the one he was looking for, he smiled. 

For an instant longer he remained near the book- 
case, reading the note by a golden sunbeam that 
came to him from the middle window. He himself, 
in this dawnlike light, appeared, with his snow- 
white hair and beard, strong and vigorous; although 
he was near sixty, his color was so fresh, his 
features were so finely cut, his eyes were still so 
clear, and he had so youthful an air that one might 
have taken him, in his close-fitting, maroon velvet 
jacket, for a young man with powdered hair. 

“Here, Clotilde,” he said at last, “you will copy 
this note. Ramond would never be able to decipher 
my diabolical writing.” 

And he crossed the room and laid the paper 
beside the young girl, who stood working at a high 
desk in the embrasure of the window to the right. 

“Very well, master,” she answered. 

She did not even turn round, so engrossed was 
her attention with the pastel which she was at the 
moment rapidly sketching in with broad strokes of 
the crayon. Near her in a vase bloomed a stalk of 
hollyhocks of a singular shade of violet, striped 
with yellow. But the profile of her small round 
head, with its short, fair hair, was clearly distin- 
guishable; an exquisite and serious profile, the 
straight forehead contracted in a frown of attention, 
the eyes of an azure blue, the nose delicately 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


3 


molded, the chin firm. Her bent neck, especially, 
of a milky whiteness, looked adorably youthful 
under the gold of the clustering curls. In her long 
black blouse she seemed very tall, with her slight 
figure, slender throat, and flexible form, the flexible 
slenderness of the divine figures of the Renaissance. 
In spite of her twenty-five years, she still retained a 
childlike air and looked hardly eighteen. 

“And,” resumed the doctor, “you will arrange 
the press a little. Nothing can be found there any 
longer.” 

“Very well, master,” she repeated, without raising 
her head ; “presently.” 

Pascal had turned round to seat himself at his 
desk, at the other end of the room, before the win- 
dow to the left. It was a plain black wooden table, 
and was littered also with papers and pamphlets of 
all sorts. And silence again reigned in the peaceful 
semi-obscurity, contrasting with the overpowering 
glare outside. The vast apartment, a dozen meters 
long and six wide, had, in addition to the press, 
only two bookcases, filled with books. Antique 
chairs of various kinds stood around in disorder, 
while, for sole adornment, along the walls, hung 
with an old salon Empire paper of a rose pattern, 
were nailed pastels of flowers of strange coloring, 
dimly visible. The woodwork of three folding- 
doors, the door opening on the hall and two others 
at opposite ends of the apartment, the one leading 
to the doctor’s room, the other to that of the 
young girl, as well as the cornice of the smoke- 


4 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


darkened ceiling, dated from the time of Louis 

XV. 

An hour passed without a sound, without a 
breath. Then Pascal, who, as a diversion from his 
•work, had opened a newspaper — Le Temps — which 
had lain forgotten on the table, uttered a slight 
exclamation : 

“Why! your father has been appointed editor 
of the Epoque , the prosperous republican journal 
which has the publishing of the papers of the 
Tuileries.” 

This news must have been unexpected by him, 
for he laughed frankly, at once pleased and sad- 
dened, and in an undertone he continued: 

“My word! If things had been invented, they 
could not have been finer. Life is a strange thing. 
This is a very interesting article.” 

Clotilde made no answer, as if her thoughts were 
a hundred leagues away from what her uncle was 
saying. And he did not speak again, but taking 
his scissors after he had read the article, he cut it 
out and pasted it on a sheet of paper, on which he 
made some marginal notes in his large, irregular 
handwriting. Then he went back to the press to 
classify this new document in it. But he was 
obliged to take a chair, the shelf being so high that 
he could not reach it notwithstanding his tall 
stature. 

On this high shelf a whole series of enormous 
bundles of papers were arranged in order, method- 
ically classified. Here were papers of all sorts: 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


5 


sheets of manuscript, documents on stamped paper, 
articles cut out of newspapers, arranged in envel- 
opes of strong blue paper, each of which bore on 
the outside a name written in large characters. 
One felt that these documents were tenderly kept 
in view, taken out continually, and carefully 
replaced ; for of the whole press, this corner was 
the only one kept in order. 

When Pascal, mounted on the chair, had found 
the package he was looking for, one of the bulkiest of 
the envelopes, on which was written the name 
“Saccard,” he added to it the new document, and 
then replaced the whole under its corresponding 
alphabetical letter. A moment later he had for- 
gotten the subject, and was complacently straight- 
ening a pile of papers that were falling down. And 
when he at last jumped down off the chair, he said : 

“When you are arranging the press, Clotilde, 
don’t touch the packages at the top; do you hear?” 

“Very well, master,” she responded, for the third 
time, docilely. 

He laughed again, with the gayety that was 
natural to him. 

“That is forbidden.” 

“I know it, master.” 

And he closed the press with a vigorous turn of 
the key, which he then threw into a drawer of his 
writing table. The young girl was sufficiently 
acquainted with his researches to keep his manu- 
scripts in some degree of order; and he gladly 
employed her as his secretary; he made her copy 


6 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


his notes when some confrere and friend, like 
Dr. Ramond asked him to send him some document. 
But she was not a savante ; he simply forbade her 
to read what he deemed it useless that she should 
know. 

At last, perceiving her so completely absorbed in 
her work, his attention was aroused. 

“What is the matter with you, that you don’t 
open your lips?’’ he said. “Are you so taken up 
with the copying of those flowers that you can’t 
speak?’’ 

This was another of the labors which he often 
intrusted to her — to make drawings, aquarelles, and 
pastels, which he afterward used in his works as 
plates. Thus, for the past five years he had been 
making some curious experiments on a collection of 
hollyhocks; he had obtained a whole series of new 
colorings by artificial fecundations. She made 
these sorts of copies with extraordinary minuteness, 
an exactitude of design and of coloring so extreme 
that he marveled unceasingly at the conscientious- 
ness of her work, and he often told her that she 
had a “good, round, strong, clear little head- 
piece.” 

But, this time, when he approached her to look 
over her shoulder, he uttered a cry of comic fury. 

“There you are at your nonsense! Now you are 
off in the clouds again! Will you do me the favor 
to tear that up at once?” 

She straightened herself, her cheeks flushed, her 
eyes aglow with the delight she took in her work, 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 7 

her slender fingers stained with the red and blue 
crayon that she had crushed. 

“Oh, master !” 

And in this “master,” so tender, so caressingly 
submissive, this term of complete abandonment by 
which she called him, in order to avoid using the 
words godfather or uncle, which she thought silly, 
there was, for the first time, a passionate accent of 
revolt, the revindication of a being recovering 
possession of and asserting itself. 

For nearly two hours she had been zealously 
striving to produce an exact and faithful copy of 
the hollyhocks, and she had just thrown on another 
sheet a whole bunch of imaginary flowers, of dream- 
flowers, extravagant and superb. She had, at 
times, these abrupt shiftings, a need of breaking 
away in wild fancies in the midst of the most 
precise of reproductions. She satisfied it at once, 
falling always into this extraordinary efflorescence 
of such spirit and fancy that it never repeated 
itself ; creating roses, with bleeding hearts, weeping 
tears of sulphur, lilies like crystal urns, flowers with- 
out any known form, even, spreading out starry 
rays, with corollas floating like clouds. To-day, on 
a groundwork dashed in with a few bold strokes of 
black crayon, it was a rain of pale stars, a whole 
shower of infinitely soft petals; while, in a corner, an 
unknown bloom, a bud, chastely veiled, was open- 
ing. 

“Another to nail there!” resumed the doctor, 
pointing to the wall, on which there was already a 


$ 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


row of strangely curious pastels. “But what may 
that represent, I ask you?” 

She remained very grave, drawing back a step, 
the better to contemplate her work. 

“I know nothing about it; it is beautiful.” 

At this moment appeared Martine, the only 
servant, become the real mistress of the house, after 
nearly thirty years of service with the doctor. 
Although she had passed her sixtieth year, she, 
too, still retained a youthful air as she went about, 
silent and active, in her eternal black gown and 
white cap that gave her the look of a nun, with her 
small, white, calm face, and lusterless eyes, the light 
in which seemed to have been extinguished. 

Without speaking, she went and sat down on the 
floor before an easy-chair, through a rent in the old 
covering of which the hair was escaping, and 
drawing from her pocket a needle and a skein of 
worsted, she set to work to mend it. For three 
days past she had been waiting for an hour’s time 
to do this piece of mending, which haunted her. 

“While you are about it, Martine,” said Pascal 
jestingly, taking between both his hands the 
mutinous head of Clotilde, “sew me fast, too, this 
little noddle, which sometimes wanders off into the 
clouds.” 

Martine raised her pale eyes, and looked at her 
master with her habitual air of adoration. 

“Why does monsieur say that?” 

“Because, my good girl, in very truth, I believe 
it is you who have stuffed this good little round, 


DOCTOR RASCAL. $ 

clear, strong headpiece full of notions of the other 
world, with all your devoutness.” 

The two women exchanged a glance of intelli- 
gence. 

“Oh, monsieur! religion has never done any 
harm to anyone. And when people have not the 
same ideas, it is certainly better not to talk about 
them.” 

An embarrassed silence followed ; this was the 
one difference of opinion which, at times, brought 
about disagreements among these three united 
beings who led so restricted a life. Martine was 
only twenty-nine, a year older than the doctor, 
when she entered his house, at the time when he 
made his debut as a physician at Plassans, in a 
bright little house of the new town. And, thirteen 
years later, when Saccard, a brother of Pascal, sent 
him his daughter Clotilde, aged seven, after his 
wife’s death and at the moment when he was about 
to marry again, it was she who brought up the 
child, talcing it to church, and communicating to it 
a little of the devout flame with which she had 
always burned ; while the doctor, who had a broad 
mind, left them to their joy of believing, for he did 
not feel that he had the right to interdict to anyone 
the happiness of faith; he contented himself later 
on with watching over the young girl’s education 
and giving her clear and sound ideas about every- 
thing. P'or thirteen years, during which the three 
had lived this retired life at La Souleiade, a small 
property situated in the outskirts of the town, a 


10 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


quarter of an hour’s walk from St. Saturnin, the 
cathedral, his life had flowed happily along, occu- 
pied in secret great works, a little troubled, how- 
ever, by an ever increasing uneasiness — the collision, 
more and more violent, every day, between their 
beliefs. 

Pascal took a few turns gloomily up and down 
the room. Then, like a man who did not mince his 
words, he said : 

“See, my dear, all this phantasmagoria of mystery 
has turned your pretty head. Your good God had 
no need of you ; I should have kept you for myself 
alone; and you would have been all the better 
for it.” 

But Clotilde, trembling w'\th excitement, her clear 
eyes fixed boldly upon his, held her ground. 

“It is you, master, who would be all the better, if 
you did not shut yourself up in your eyes of flesh. 
That is another thing, why do you not wish to see?” 

And Martine came to her assistance, in her own 
style. 

“Indeed, it is true, monsieur, that you, who are a 
saint, as I say everywhere, should accompany us to 
church. Assuredly, God will save you. But at the 
bare idea that you should not go straight to para- 
dise, I tremble all over.” 

He paused, for he had before him, in open re- 
volt, those two whom he had been accustomed to 
see submissive at his feet, with the tenderness of 
women won over by his gayety and his goodness. 
Already he opened his mouth, and was going to 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


II 


answer roughly, when the uselessness of the discus- 
sion became apparent to him. 

“There ! Let us have peace. I would do better 
to go and work. And above all, let no one inter- 
rupt me !” 

With hasty steps he gained his chamber, where 
he had installed a sort of laboratory, and shut him- 
self up in it. The prohibition to enter it was 
formal. It was here that he gave himself up to 
special preparations, of which he spoke to no one. 
Almost immediately the slow and regular sound of 
a pestle grinding in a mortar was heard. 

“Come,” said Clotilde, smiling, “there he is, at his 
devil’s cookery, as grandmother says.” 

And she tranquilly resumed her copying of the 
hollyhocks. She completed the drawing with math- 
ematical precision, she found the exact tone of the 
violet petals, striped with yellow, even to the most 
delicate discoloration of the shades. 

“Ah!” murmured Martine, after a moment, again 
seated on the ground, and occupied in mending the 
chair, “what a misfortune for a good man like that 
to lose his soul willfully. For there is no denying it ; 
I have known him now for thirty years, and in all 
that time he has never so much as spoken an 
unkind word to anyone. A real heart of gold, who 
would take the bit from his own mouth. And 
handsome, too, and always well, and always gay, a 
real blessing! It is a murder that he does not wish 
to make his peace with the good God. We will 
force him to do it, mademoiselle, will we not?” 


12 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


Clotilde, surprised at hearing her speak so long at 
one time on the subject, gave her word with a 
grave air. 

“Certainly, Martine, it is a promise. We will 
force him.” 

Silence reigned again, broken a moment after- 
ward by the ringing of the bell attached to the 
street door below. It had been attached to the 
door so that they might have notice when anyone 
entered the house, too vast for the three persons 
who inhabited it. The servant appeared surprised, 
and grumbled a few words under her tfreath. 
Who could have come in such heat as this? 
She rose, opened the door, and went and leaned 
over the balustrade; then she returned, say- 
ing: 

“It is Mme. Felicity.” 

Old Mme. Rougon entered briskly. In spite of 
her eighty years, she had mounted the stairs with 
the activity of a young girl ; she was still the 
brown, lean, shrill grasshopper of old. Dressed 
elegantly now in black silk, she might still be taken, 
seen from behind, thanks to the slenderness of her 
figure, for some coquette, or some ambitious woman 
following her favorite pursuit. Seen in front, her 
eyes still lighted up her withered visage with their 
fires, and she smiled with an engaging smile, when 
she so desired. 

“What! is it you, grandmother?” cried Clotilde, 
going to meet her. “Why, this sun is enough to 
bake one,” 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


13 


Felicite, kissing her on the forehead, laughed, 
saying : 

“Oh, the sun is my friend !” 

Then, moving with short, quick steps, she crossed 
the room, and turned the fastening of one of the 
shutters. 

“Open the shutters a little! It is too gloomy to 
live in the dark in this way. At my house I let the 
sun come in.” 

Through the opening a jet of hot light, a flood of 
dancing sparks entered. And under the sky, of 
the violet blue of a conflagration, the parched plain 
could be seen, stretching away in the distance, as if 
asleep or dead in the overpowering, furnace-like 
heat, while to the right, above the pink roofs, rose 
the belfry of St. Saturnin, a gilded tower with 
arrises that, in the blinding light, looked like 
whitened bones. 

“Yes,” continued Felicity, “I think of going 
shortly to the Tulettes, and I wished to know if 
Charles were here, to take him with me. He is not 
here — I see that — I will take him another day.” 

But while she gave this pretext for her visit, her 
ferret-like eyes were making the tour of the apart- 
ment. Besides, she did not insist, speaking 
immediately afterward of her son Pascal, on hearing 
the rhythmical noise of the pestle, which had not 
ceased in the adjoining chamber. 

“Ah ! he is still at his devil's cookery ! Don’t 
disturb him, I have nothing to say to him.” 

Martine, who had resumed her work on the chair, 


14 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


shook her head, as if to say that she had no mind 
to disturb her master, and there was silence again, 
while Clotilde wiped her fingers, stained with crayon, 
on a cloth, and Felicity began to walk about the , 
room with short steps, looking around inquisk 
tively. 

Old Mme. Rougon would soon be two years a 
widow. Her husband, who had grown so corpulent 
that he could no longer move, had succumbed to an 
attack of indigestion on the 3d of September, 1870, 
on the night of the day on which he had learned of 
the catastrophe of Sedan. The ruin of the govern- 
ment of which he flattered himself with being one 
of the founders, seemed to have crushed him. 
Thus, Felicite affected to occupy herself no longer 
with politics, living, thenceforward, like a dethroned 
queen, the only surviving power of a vanished 
world. No one was unaware that the Rougons, in 
1851, had saved Plassans from anarchy, by causing 
the coup d' Mat of the 2d of December to triumph 
there, and that, a few years later, they had won it 
again from the legitimist* and republican candidates, 
to give it to a Bonapartist deputy. Up to the time 
of the war, the Empire had continued all-powerful in 
the town, so popular that it had obtained there 
at the plebiscite an overwhelming majority. But 
since the disasters, the town had become repub- 
lican, the quarter St. Marc had returned to its secret 
royalist intrigues, while the old quarter and the new 
town had sent to the chamber a liberal representa- 
tive, slightly tinged with Orleanism, and ready to 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


15 


take sides with the republic, if it should triumph. 
And, therefore, it was that Felicite, like the intelli- 
gent woman she was, had withdrawn her attention 
from politics, and consented to be nothing more 
than the dethroned queen of a fallen government. 

But this was still an exalted position, surrounded 
by a melancholy poetry. For sixteen years she 
had reigned. The tradition of her two salons , the 
yellow salon in which the coup d'ttat had matured, 
and the green salon , later the neutral ground on 
which the conquest of Plassans was completed, 
embellished itself with the reflection of the vanished 
past, and was for her a glorious history. And 
besides, she was very rich. Then, too, she had 
shown herself dignified in her fall, never uttering a 
regret or a complaint, parading, with her eighty 
years, so long a succession of fierce appetites, of 
abominable maneuvers, of inordinate gratifications, 
that she became august through them. Her only 
happiness, now, was to enjoy in peace her large 
fortune and her past royalty, and she had but 
one passion left — to defend her past, to extend 
its fame, suppressing everything that might tarnish 
it later. Her pride, which lived on the double 
exploit of which the inhabitants still spoke, 
watched with jealous care, resolved to leave in 
existence only creditable documents, those tradi- 
tions which caused her to be saluted like a fallen 
queen, when she walked through the town. 

She went to the door of the chamber and listened 
to the persistent noise of the pestle, which did not 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


16 

cease. Then, with an anxious brow, she returned to 
Clotilde. 

“Good Heavens! What is he making? You 
know that he is doing himself the greatest harm 
with his new drug. I was told, the other day, that 
he came near killing one of his patients.” 

“Oh, grandmother!” cried the young girl. 

But she was now launched. 

“Yes, exactly. The good wives say many other 
things, besides! Why, go question them, in the 
faubourg! They will tell you that he grinds dead 
men’s bones in infants’ blood.” 

This time, while even Martine protested, Clotilde, 
wounded in her affection, grew angry. 

“Oh, grandmother, do not repeat such abomina- 
tions! Master has so great a heart that he thinks 
only of making everyone happy !” 

Then, when she saw that they were both angry, 
Felicite, comprehending that she had gone too far, 
resumed her coaxing manner. 

“But, my kitten, it is not I who say those fright- 
ful things. I repeat to you the stupid reports they 
spread, so that you may comprehend that Pascal is 
wrong to pay no heed to public opinion. He thinks 
he has found a new remedy — nothing could be 
better! and I will even admit that he will be able to 
cure everybody, as he hopes. Only, why affect 
these mysterious ways ; why not speak of the matter 
openly; why, above all, try it only on the rabble of 
the old quarter and of the country, instead of 
attempting, among the well-to-do people of the 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


17 


town, striking cures which would do him honor? 
No, my child, you see your uncle has never been 
able to act like other people.” 

She had assumed a grieved tone, lowering her 
voice, to display this secret wound of her heart. 

“God be thanked ! it is not men of worth who 
are wanting in our family; my other sons have 
given me satisfaction enough. Is it not so? Your 
Uncle Eugene rose high enough, minister for 
twelve years, almost emperor! And your father 
himself handled many a million, and had a part in 
many a one of the great works which have made 
Paris a new city. Not to speak at all of your 
brother, Maxime, so rich, so distinguished, nor of 
your cousin, Octave Mouret, one of the kings of 
the new commerce, nor of our dear Abbe Mouret, 
who is a saint! Well, then, why does Pascal, who 
might have followed in the footsteps of them all, 
persist in living in his hole, like an eccentric old 
fool?” 

And as the young girl was again going to protest, 
she closed her mouth, with a caressing gesture of her 
• hand. 

“No, no, let me finish. I know very well that 
Pascal is not a fool, that he has written remarkable 
works, that his communications to the Academy of 
Medicine have even won for him a reputation 
among savants. But what does that count for, com- 
pared to what I had dreamed of for him? Yes, all 
the best practice of the town, a large fortune, the 
decoration— honors, in short, and a position worthy 


i8 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


of the family. My word! I used to say to him 
when he was a child : ‘But where do you come 
from? You are not one of us!’ As for me, I have 
sacrificed everything for the family; I would let 
myself be hacked to pieces, that the family might 
always be great and glorious!” 

She straightened her small figure, she seemed to 
grow tall with the one passion that had formed the 
joy and pride of her life. But as she resumed her 
walk, she was startled by suddenly perceiving on 
the floor the copy of the Temps , which the doctor 
had thrown there, after cutting out the article, to 
add it to the Saccard papers, and the light from 
the open window, falling full upon the sheet, enlight- 
ened her, no doubt, for she suddenly stopped walk- 
ing, and threw herself into a chair, as if she at last \ 
knew what she had come to learn. 

‘‘Your father has been appointed editor of the 
Epoque," she said abruptly. 

‘‘Yes,” answered Clotilde tranquilly, ‘‘master told 
me so ; it was in the paper.” 

With an anxious and attentive expression, Felicite 
looked at her, for this appointment of Saccard, thifj 
rallying to the republic, was something of vast 
significance. After the fall of the Empire he had 
dared to return to France, notwithstanding his]! 
condemnation as director of the Banque Universelle, ! 
the colossal fall of which had preceded that of 
the government. New influences, some incredible! 
intrigue must have placed him on his feet again, for 
not only had he received his pardon, but he was j 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


*9 

once more in a position to undertake affairs of con- 
siderable importance, launched into journalism, 
having his share again of all the good things going. 
And the recollection came to her of the quarrels of 
other days between him and his brother Eugene 
Rougon, whom he had so often compromised, and 
whom, by an ironical turn of events, he was perhaps 
going to protect, now that the former minister of 
the Empire was only a simple deputy, resigned to 
the single role of standing by his fallen master with 
the obstinacy with which his mother stood by her 
family. She still obeyed docilely the orders of her 
eldest son, the genius, fallen though he was; but 
Saccard, whatever he might do, had also a part in 
her heart, from his indomitable determination to 
succeed, and she was also proud of Maxime, 
Clotilde’s brother, who had taken up his quarters 
again, after the war, in his mansion in the Avenue 
of the Bois de Boulogne, where he was consuming 
the fortune left him by his wife, Louise de Mareuil, 
become prudent, with the wisdom of a man struck 
in a vital part, and trying to cheat the paralysis 
which threatened him. 

“Editor of the Epoque ,” she repeated ; “it is really 
the position of a minister which your father has 
won. And I forgot to tell you, I have written 
again to your brother, to persuade him to come and 
see us. That would divert him, it would do him 
good. Then, there is that child, that poor 
Charles ” 

She did not continue. This was another of the 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


to 

wounds from which her pride bled ; a son whom 
Maxime had had when seventeen by a servant, and 
who now, at the age of fifteen, weak of intellect, a 
half-idiot, lived at Plassans, going from the house 
of one to that of another, a burden to all. 

She remained silent a moment longer, waiting for 
some remark from Clotilde, some transition by 
which she might come to the subject she wished to 
touch upon. When she saw that the young girl, 
occupied in arranging the papers on her desk, was 
no longer listening, she came to a sudden decision, 
after casting a glance at Martine, who continued 
mending the chair, as if she were deaf and dumb. 

“Your uncle cut the article out of the Temps , 
then?” 

Clotilde smiled calmly. 

“Yes, master put it away among his papers. 
Ah! how many notes he buries in there! Births, 
deaths, the smallest event in life, everything goes in 
there. And the genealogical tree is there also, our 
famous genealogical tree, which he keeps up to 
date !” 

The eyes of old Mme. Rougon flamed. She 
looked fixedly at the young girl. 

“You know them, those papers?” 

“Oh, no, grandmother; master has never spoken 
to me of them ; and he has forbidden me to touch 
them.” 

But she did not believe her. 

“Come ! you have them under your hands, you 
must have read them.” 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


2 1 

Very simply, with her calm rectitude, Clotilde 
answered, smiling again. 

‘‘No, when master forbids me to do anything, it 
is because he has his reasons, and I do not do it.” 

‘‘Well, my child,” cried Felicite vehemently, 
dominated by her passion, “you, whom Pascal loves 
tenderly, and whom he would listen to, perhaps, you 
ought to entreat him to burn all that, for if he 
should chance to die, and those frightful things 
which he has in there were to be found, we should 
all be dishonored !” 

Ah, those abominable papers! she saw them at 
night, in her nightmares, revealing, in letters of fire, 
the true histories, the physiological blemishes of the 
family, all that wrong side of her glory which she 
would have wished to bury forever with the ances- 
tors already dead ! She knew how it was that the 
doctor had conceived the idea of collecting these 
documents at the beginning of his great studies on 
heredity; how he had found himself led to take his 
own family as an example, struck by the typical 
cases which he saw in it, and which helped to 
support laws discovered by him. Was it not a per- 
fectly natural field of observation, close at hand 
and with which he was thoroughly familiar? And 
with the fine, careless justness of the scientist, he 
had been accumulating for the last thirty years the 
most private data, collecting and classifying every- 
thing, raising this genealogical tree of the Rou- 
gon-Macquarts, of which the voluminous papers, 
crammed full of proofs, were only the commentary. 


22 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


“Ah, yes,” continued Mme. Rougon hotly, “to 
the fire, to the fire with all those papers that would 
tarnish our name !” 

And as the servant rose to leave the room, seeing 
the turn the conversation was taking, she stopped 
her by a quick gesture. 

“No, no, Martine; stay! You are not in the way, 
since you are now one of the family.” 

Then, in a hissing voice: 

“A collection of falsehoods, of gossip, all the lies 
that our enemies, enraged by our triumph, hurled 
against us in former days! Think a little of that, 
my child. Against all of us, against your father, 
against your mother, against your brother, all those 
horrors !” 

“But how do you know they are horrors, grand- 
mother?” 

She was disconcerted for a moment. 

“Oh, well; I suspect it! Where is the family that 
has not had misfortunes which might be injuriously 
interpreted? Thus, the mother of us all, that dear 
and venerable Aunt Dide, your great-grandmother, 
has she not been for the past twenty-one years in 
the madhouse at the Tulettes? If God has 
granted her the grace of allowing her to live to the 
age of one hundred and four years, he has also 
cruelly afflicted her in depriving her of her reason. 
Certainly, there is no shame in that ; only, what 
exasperates me — what must not be — is that they 
should say afterward that we are all mad. And, 
then, regarding your granduncle Macquart, too, 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


23 


deplorable rumors have been spread. Macquart 
had his faults in past days, I do not seek to defend 
him. But to-day, is he not living very reputably 
on his little property at the Tulettes, two steps 
away from our unhappy mother, over whom he 
watches like a good son? And listen! one last 
example. Your brother, Maxime, committed a 
great fault when he had by a servant that poor 
little Charles, and it is certain, besides, that the 
unhappy child is of unsound mind. No matter. 
Will it please you if they tell you that your nephew 
is degenerate; that he reproduces from four genera- 
tions back, his great-great-grandmother, the dear 
woman to whom we sometimes take him, and with 
whom he likes so much to be? No! there is no 
longer any family possible, if people begin to 
lay bare everything — the nerves of this one, the 
muscles of that. It is enough to disgust one with 
living ! ” 

Clotilde, standing in her long black blouse, had 
listened to her grandmother attentively. She had 
grown very serious; her arms hung by her sides, 
her eyes were fixed upon the ground. There was 
silence for a moment; then she said slowly: 

“It is science, grandmother.” 

“Science!” cried Felicite, trotting about again. 
“A fine thing, their science, that goes against all 
that is most sacred in the world ! When they shall 
have demolished everything they will have advanced 
greatly! They kill respect, they kill the family, 
they kill the good God !” 


24 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


“Oh! don’t say that, madame!” interrupted Mar- 
tine, in a grieved voice, her narrow devoutness 
wounded. “Do not say that M. Pascal kills the 
good God !” 

“Yes, my poor girl, he kills him. And look you, 
it is a crime, from the religious point of view, to let 
one’s self be damned in that way. You do not love 
him, on my word of honor! No, you do not love 
him, you two who have the happiness of believing, 
since you do nothing to bring him back to the right 
path. Ah ! if I were in your place, I would split 
that press open with a hatchet. I would make a 
famous bonfire with all the insults to the good God 
which it contains!” 

She had planted herself before the immense press 
and was measuring it with her fiery glance, as if to 
take it by assault, to sack it, to destroy it, in spite 
of the withered and fragile thinness of her eighty 
years. Then, with a gesture of ironical disdain: 

“If, even with his science, he could know every- 
thing !” 

Clotilde remained for a moment absorbed in 
thought, her gaze lost in vacancy. Then she said 
in an undertone, as if speaking to herself : 

“It is true, he cannot know everything. There 
is always' something else below. That is what irri- 
tates me ; that is what makes us quarrel ; for I can- 
not, like him, put the mystery aside. I am troubled 
by it, so much so that I suffer cruelly. Below, what 
wills and acts in the shuddering darkness, all the 
unknown forces ” 


DOC TOP PASCAL. 25 

Her voice had gradually become lower, and now 
dropped to an indistinct murmur. 

Then Martine, whose face for a moment past had 
worn a somber expression, interrupted in her turn : 

“If it was true, however, mademoiselle, that 
monsieur would be damned on account of those 
villainous papers, tell me, ought we to let it happen? 
For my part, look you, if he were to tell me to 
throw myself down from the terrace, I would shut 
my eyes and throw myself, because I know that he 
is always right. But for his salvation! Oh! if I 
could, I would work for that, in spite of him. In 
I every way, yes ! I would force him ; it is too cruel 
1 to me to think that he will not be in heaven 
, with us. M 

“You are quite right, my girl,” said Felicite 
approvingly. “You, at least, love your master in an 
intelligent fashion.” 

Between the two, Clotilde still seemed irresolute. 
I In her, belief did not bend to the strict rule of 
dogma; the religious sentiment did not materialize 
in the hope of a paradise, of a place of delights, 
where she was to meet her own again. It was in 
her simply a need of a beyond, a certainty that the 
I vast world does not stop short at sensation, that 
there is a whole unknown world, besides, which 
must be taken into account. But her grandmother, 
j who was so old, this servant, who was so devoted, 
, shook her in her uneasy affection for her uncle. 

| Did they not love him better, in a more enlightened 
and more upright fashion, they who desired him to 


26 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


be without a stain, freed from his manias as a 
scientist, pure enough to be among the elect? 
Phrases of devotional books recurred to her; the 
continual battle waged against the spirit of evil ; the 
glory of conversions effected after a violent strug- 
gle. What if she set herself to this holy task; what 
if, after all, in spite of'himself, she should be able to 
save him ! And an exaltation gradually gained her 
spirit, naturally inclined to adventurous enter- 
prises. 

“Certainly,” she said at last, “I should be very 
happy if he would not persist in his notion of heap- 
ing up all those scraps of paper, and if he would 
come to church with us.” 

Seeing her about to yield, Mine. Rougon cried out 
that it was necessary to act, and Martine herself 
added the weight of all her real authority. They 
both approached the young girl, and began to ; 
instruct her, lowering their voices as if they were J 
engaged in a conspiracy, whence was to result a 
miraculous benefit, a divine joy with which the 1 
whole house would be perfumed. What a triumph I 
if they reconciled the doctor with God ! and what 
sweetness, afterward, to live all together in the 
celestial communion of the same faith ! 

“Well, then, what must I do?” asked Clotilde, ] 
vanquished, won over. 

But at this moment the doctor’s pestle was heard 
in the silence, with its continued rhythm. And the 
victorious Felicite, who was about to speak, turned 
her head uneasily, and looked for a moment at the ! 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


27 


door of the adjoining chamber. Then, in an under- 
tone, she said : 

“Do you know where the key of the press is?” 

Clotilde answered only with an artless gesture, 
that expressed all her repugnance to betray her 
master in this way. 

“What a child you are ! I swear to you that I 
will take nothing; I will not even disturb anything. 
Only, as we are alone and as Pascal never reappears 
before dinner, we might assure ourselves of what 
there is in there, might we not? Oh! nothing but 
a glance, on my word of honor!” 

The young girl stood motionless, unwilling, still, 
to give her consent. 

“And then, it may be that I am mistaken ; no 
doubt there are none of those bad things there that 
I have told you of.” 

This was decisive; she ran to take the key from 
the drawer, and she herself opened wide the press. 

“There, grandmother, the papers are up there.” 

Martine had gone, without a word, to station her- 
self at the door of the doctor’s chamber, her ear on 
the alert, listening to the pestle, while Felicite, as 
if riveted to the spot by emotion, regarded the 
papers. At last, there they were, those terrible 
documents, the nightmare that had poisoned her 
life ! She saw them, she was going to touch them, 
to carry them away! And she reached up, straining 
her little legs, in the eagerness of her desire. 

“It is too high, my kitten,” she said. “Help me; 
give them to me !” 


28 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


“Oh ! not that, grandmother! Take a chair!’ 

Felicite took a chair, and mounted slowly upon it. 
But she was still too short. By an extraordinary 
effort she rais'ed herself, lengthening her stature 
until she was able to touch the envelopes of strong 
blue paper with the tips of her fingers; and her 
fingers traveled over them, contracting nervously, 
scratching like claws. Suddenly there was a crash 
— it was a geological specimen, a fragment of 
marble that had been on a lower shelf, and that she 
had just thrown down. 

Instantly the pestle stopped, and Martine said in 
a stifled voice : 

“Take care; here he comes!” 

But Felicite, grown desperate, did not hear, did 
not let go her hold when Pascal entered hastily. 
He had supposed that some accident had happened, 
that someone had fallen, and he stood stupefied at 
what he saw — his mother on the chair, her arm still 
in the air, while Martine had withdrawn to one side, 
and Clotilde, very pale, stood waiting, without turn- 
ing her head. When he comprehended the scene, 
he himself became as white as a sheet. A terrible 
anger arose within him. 

Old Mine. Rougon, however, troubled herself in 
no wise. When she saw that the opportunity was 
lost, she descended from the chair, without making 
any allusion whatever to the task at which he had 
surprised her. 

“Oh, it is you ! I do not wish to disturb you. I 
came to embrace Clotilde. But here I have been 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


29 


talking for nearly two hours, and I must run away 
at once. They will be expecting me at home; they 
won’t know what has become of me at this hour. 
Good-by until Sunday.” 

She went away quite at her ease, after smiling at 
her son, who stood before her silent and respectful. 
It was an attitude that he had long since adopted, 
to avoid an explanation which he felt must be cruel, 
and which he had always feared. He knew her, he 
was willing to pardon her everything, in his broad 
tolerance as a scientist, who made allowance for 
heredity, environment, and circumstances. And 
then, was she not his mother? That ought to have 
sufficed, for, in spite of the frightful blows which 
his researches inflicted upon the family, he pre- 
served a great affection for those belonging to 
him. 

When his mother was no longer there, his anger 
burst forth, and fell upon Clotilde. He had turned 
his eyes away from Martine, and had fixed them on 
the young girl, who did not turn hers away, how- 
ever, with a courage which accepted the responsi- 
bility of her act. 

“You! you!” he said at last. 

He seized her arm, and pressed it until she cried. 
But she continued to look him full in the face, 
without quailing before him, with the indomitable 
will of her individuality, of her selfhood. She was 
beautiful and provoking, with her tall, slender figure, 
robed in its black blouse: and her exquisite, youth- 
ful fairness, her straight forehead, her finely cut 


3 ° 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


nose, her firm chin, took on something of a warlike 
charm in her rebellion. 

“You, whom I have made, you who are my pupil, 
my friend, my other mind, to whom I have given a 
part of my heart and of my brain ! Ah, yes ! I 
should have kept you entirely for myself, and not 
have allowed your stupid good God to take the best 
part of you !” 

“Oh, monsieur, you blaspheme!” cried Martine, 
who had approached him, in order to draw upon 
herself a part of his anger. 

But he did not even see her. Only Clotilde 
existed for him. And he was as if transfigured, 
stirred up by so great a passion that his handsome 
face, crowned by his white hair, framed by his 
white beard, flamed with youthful passion, with an 
immense tenderness that had been wounded and 
exasperated. 

“You, you!” he repeated in a trembling voice. 

“Yes, I! Why then, master, should I not love 
you better than you love me? And why, if I 
believe you to be in peril, should I not try to save 
you? You are greatly concerned about what I 
think; you would like well to make me think as 
you do!” 

She had never before defied him in this way. 

“But you are a little girl; you know nothing!” 

“No, I am a soul, and you know no more about 
souls than I do !” 

He released her arm, and waved his hand 
vaguely toward heaven, and then a great silence 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 31 

fell — a silence full of grave meaning, of the useless- 
ness of the discussion which he did not wish to 
enter upon. Thrusting her aside rudely, he crossed 
over to the middle window and opened the blinds, 
for the sun was declining, and the room was growing 
dark. Then he returned. 

But she, feeling a need of air and space, went to 
the open window. The burning rain of sparks had 
ceased, and there fell now, from on high, only the 
last shiver of the overheated and paling sky; and 
from the still burning earth ascended warm odors, 
with the freer respiration of evening. At the foot 
of the terrace was the railroad, with the outlying 
dependencies of the station, of which the buildings 
were to be seen in the distance ; then, crossing the 
vast arid plain, a line of trees marked the course of 
the Viorne, beyond which rose the hills of Sainte- 
Marthe, red fields planted with olive trees, sup- 
ported on terraces by walls of uncemented stones, 
and crowned by somber pine woods — broad amphi- 
theaters, bare and desolate, corroded by the heats 
of summer, of the color of old baked brick, which 
this fringe of dark verdure, standing out against the 
background of the sky, bordered above. To the left 
opened the gorges of the Seille, great yellow stones 
that had broken away from the soil, and lay in the 
midst of blood-colored fields, dominated by an 
immense band of rocks like the wall of a gigantic 
fortress ; while to the right, at the very entrance to 
the valley through which flowed the Viorne, rose, 
one above another, the discolored pink-tiled roofs of 


3 2 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


the town of Plassans, the compact and confused 
mass of an old town, pierced by the tops of ancient 
elms, and dominated by the high tower of St. 
Saturnin, solitary and serene at this hour in the 
limpid gold of sunset. 

‘‘Ah, my God !” said Clotilde slowly, “one must 
be arrogant, indeed, to imagine that one can take 
everything in one’s hand and know everything!” 

Pascal had just mounted on the chair to assure 
himself that not one of his packages was missing. 
Then he took up the fragment of marble, and 
replaced it on the shelf, and when he had again 
locked the press with a vigorous turn of the hand, 
he put the key into his pocket. 

“Yes,” he replied; “try not to know everything, 
and above all, try not to bewilder your brain about 
what we do not know, what we shall doubtless never 
know !” 

Martine again approached Clotilde, to lend her 
her support, to show her that they both had a 
common cause. And now the doctor perceived her, 
also, and felt that they were both united in the same 
desire for conquest. After years of secret attempts, 
it was at last open war; the savant saw his house- 
hold turn against his opinions, and menace them 
with destruction. There is no worse torture than 
to have treason in one’s own home, around one; to 
be trapped, dispossessed, crushed, by those whom 
you love, and who love you ! 

Suddenly this frightful idea presented itself to 
him. 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


33 


“And yet both of you love me !” he cried. 

He saw their eyes grow dim with tears; he was 
filled with an infinite sadness, on this tranquil close 
of a beautiful day. All his gayety, all his kindness 
of heart, which came from his intense love of life, 
were shaken by it. 

“Ah, my dear! and you, my poor girl,” he said, 
“you are doing this for my happiness, are you not? 
But, alas, how unhappy we are going to be !” 


II. 


On the following morning Clotilde was awake 
At six o’clock. She had gone to bed angry with 
Pascal ; they were at variance with each other. 
And her first feeling was one of uneasiness, of secret 
distress, an instant need of making her peace, so 
that she might no longer have upon her heart the 
heavy weight that lay there now. 

Springing quickly out of bed, she went and half 
opened the shutters of both windows. The sun, 
already high, sent his light across the chamber in 
two golden bars. Into this drowsy room that 
exhaled a sweet odor of youth, the bright morning 
brought with it fresh, cheerful air; but the young 
girl went back and sat down on the edge of the bed 
in a thoughtful attitude, clad only in her scant 
nightdress, which made her look still more slender, 
with her long tapering limbs, her strong, slender 
body, with its round throat, round neck, round and 
supple arms; and her adorable neck and throat, of 
a milky whiteness, had the exquisite softness and 
smoothness of white satin. For a long time, at the 
ungraceful age between twelve and eighteen, she 
had looked awkwardly tall, climbing trees like a 
boy. Then, from the ungainly hoyden had been 
evolved this charming, delicate, and lovely creature. 


34 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


35 


With absent gaze she sat looking at the walls of 
the chamber. Although La Souleiade dated from 
the last century, it must have been refurnished 
under the First Empire, for it was hung with an old- 
fashioned printed calico, with a pattern representing 
busts of the Sphinx, and garlands of oak leaves. 
Originally of a bright red, this calico had faded to 
a pink — an undecided pink, inclining to orange. 
The curtains of the. two windows and of the bed 
were still in existence, but it had been necessary to 
clean them, and this had made them still paler. 
And this faded purple, this dawnlike tint, so deli- 
cately soft, was in truth exquisite. As for the bed, 
covered with the same stuff, it had come down from 
so remote an antiquity that it had been replaced by 
another bed found in an adjoining room ; another 
Empire bed, low and very broad, of massive mahog- 
any, ornamented with brasses, its four square pillars 
adorned also with busts of the Sphinx, like those on 
the wall. The rest of the furniture matched, how- 
ever — a press, with whole doors and pillars; a chest 
of drawers with a marble top, surrounded by a 
railing ; a tall and massive cheval-glass, a large lounge 
with straight feet, and seats with straight, lyre- 
shaped backs. But a coverlet made of an old 
Louis XV. silk skirt brightened the majestic bed, 
that occupied the middle of the wall fronting the 
windows; a heap of cushions made the lounge soft; 
and there were, besides, two ttageres and a table 
also covered with old flowered silk, at the further 
end of the room. 


3 6 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


Clotilde at last put on her stockings and slipped 
on a morning gown of white piquJ, and thrusting 
the tips of her feet into her gray canvas slippers, 
she ran into her dressing room, a back room looking 
out on the rear of the house. She had had it hung 
plainly with an tern drill with blue stripes, and it ' 
contained only furniture of varnished pine — the 
toilette table, two presses, and two chairs. It 
revealed, however, a natural and delicate coquetry 
which was very feminine. This had grown with 
her at the same time with her beauty. Headstrong 
and boyish though she still was at times, she had 
become a submissive and affectionate woman, 
desiring to be loved, above everything. The truth 
was that she had grown up in freedom, without 
having learned anything more than to read and 
write, having acquired by herself, later, while assist- 
ing her uncle, a vast fund of information. But 
there had been no plan settled upon between them. 
He had not wished to make of her a prodigy ; she I 
had merely conceived a passion for natural history, 1 
which revealed to her the mysteries of life. And I 
she had kept her innocence unsullied like a fruit 
which no hand has touched, thanks, no doubt, to 
her unconscious and religious waiting for the ] 
coming of love — that profoundly feminine feeling 
which made her reserve the gift of her whole being 
for the man whom she should love. 

She pushed back her hair and bathed her face; 
then, yielding to her impatience, she again softly 
opened the door of her chamber and ventured to 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


37 


cross the vast workroom, noiselessly and on tiptoe. 
The shutters were still closed, but she could see 
clearly enough not to stumble against the furniture. 
; When she was at the other end before the door of 
the doctor’s room, she bent forward, holding her 
breath. Was he already up? What could he be 
doing? She heard him plainly, walking about with 
short steps, dressing himself, no doubt. She never 
! entered this chamber in which he chose to hide 
certain labors; and which thus remained closed, like 
a tabernacle. One fear had taken possession of her; 
that of being discovered here by him if he should 
open the door; and the agitation produced by the 
struggle between her rebellious pride and a desire 
j to show her submission caused her to grow hot and 
, cold by turns, with sensations until now unknown 
to her. For an instant her desire for reconciliation 
S was so strong that she was on the point of knock- 
ing. Then, as footsteps approached, she ran 
precipitately away. 

Until eight o’clock Clotilde was agitated by an 
ever-increasing impatience. At every instant she 
looked at the clock on the mantelpiece of her room; 
an Empire clock of gilded bronze, representing 
Love leaning against a pillar, contemplating Time 
asleep. 

Eight was the hour at which she generally 
descended to the dining room to breakfast with the 
doctor. And while waiting she made a careful 
toilette, arranged her hair, and put on another 
morning gown of white muslin with red spots. 


38 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


Then, having still a quarter of an hour on her 
hands, she satisfied an old desire and sat down to 
sew a piece of narrow lace, an imitation of Chan- 
tilly, on her working blouse, that black blouse 
which she had begun to find too boyish, not 
feminine enough. But on the stroke of eight she 
laid down her work, and went downstairs quickly. 

“You are going to breakfast entirely alone,” said 
Martine tranquilly to her, when she entered the 
dining room. 

“How is that?” 

“Yes, the doctor called me, and I passed him in 
his egg through the half-open door. There he is 
again, at his mortar and his filter. We won’t see 
him now before noon.” 

Clotilde turned pale with disappointment. She 
drank her milk standing, took her roll in her hand, 
and followed the servant into the kitchen. There 1 
were on the ground floor, besides this kitchen and 
the dining room, only an uninhabited room in which 
the potatoes were stored, and which had formerly 
been used as an office by the doctor, when he 
received his patients in his house — the desk and the 
armchair had years ago been taken up to his cham- 
ber — and another small room, which opened into the 
kitchen ; the old servant’s room, scrupulously clean, 
and furnished with a walnut chest of drawers and a 
bed like a nun’s, with white hangings. 

‘‘Do you think he has begun to make his liquor 
again?” asked Clotilde. 

‘‘Well, it can be only that. You know that he 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


39 


thinks of neither eating nor drinking when that 
takes possession of him !” 

Then all the young girl’s vexation was exhaled in 
a low plaint : 

“Ah, my God ! my God !” 

And while Martine went to make up her room, 
she took an umbrella from the hall stand and went 
disconsolately to eat her roll in the garden, not 
knowing now how she should occupy her time until 
midday. 

It was now almost seventeen years since 
Dr. Pascal, having resolved to leave his little house 
in the new town, had bought La Souleiade for 
twenty thousand francs, in order to live there in 
I seclusion, and also to give more space and more 
; happiness to the little girl sent him by his brother 
; Saccard from Paris. This Souleiade, situated out- 
8 side the town gates on a plateau dominating the 
j plain, was part of a large estate whose once vast 
grounds were reduced to less than two hectares in 
consequence of successive sales, without counting 
j that the construction of the railroad had taken 
away the last arable fields. The house itself had 
been half destroyed by a conflagration and only 
one of the two buildings remained — a quadrangular 
wing “of four walls,” as they say in Provence, with 
five front windows and roofed with large pink tiles. 
And the doctor, who had bought it completely 
furnished, had contented himself with repairing it 
and finishing the boundary walls, so as to be undis- 
turbed in his house. 


46 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


Generally Clotilde loved this solitude passion- 
ately ; this narrow kingdom which she could go over 
in ten minutes, and which still retained remnants of 
its past grandeur. But this morning she brought 
there something like a nervous disquietude. She 
walked for a few moments along the terrace, at 
the two extremities of which stood two secular 
cypresses like two enormous funeral tapers, which 
could be seen three leagues off. The slope then 
descended to the railroad, walls of uncemented | 
stones supporting the red earth, in which the last 
vines were dead ; and on these giant steps grew ) 
only rows of olive and almond trees, with sickly j 
foliage. The heat was already overpowering; she; 
saw the little lizards running about on the dis-j 
jointed flags, among the hairy tufts of caper bushes. 

Then, as if irritated by the vast horizon, she 
crossed the orchard and the kitchen garden, which 
Martine still persisted in cultivating in spite of her 
age, calling in a man only twice a week for the 
heavier labors; and she ascended to a little pine 
wood on the right, all that remained of the superb 
pines which had formerly covered the plateau ; but 
here, too, she was ill at ease; the pine needles, 
crackled under her feet, a resinous, stifling odor 
descended from the branches. And walking along 
the boundary wall, past the entrance gate, which 
opened on the road to Les Fenouilleres, three ] 
hundred meters from the first houses of Plassans, 
she emerged at last on the threshing-yard ; an im- 
mense yard, fifteen meters in radius, which would of 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


41 


itself have sufficed to prove the former importance 
of the domain. Ah ! this antique area, paved with 
small round stones, as in the days of the Romans; 
this species of vast esplanade, covered with short 
dry grass of the color of gold as with a thick woolen 
carpet ; how joyously she had played there in other 
days, running about, rolling on the grass, lying for 
hours on her back, watching the stars coming out 
one by one in the depths of the illimitable sky! 

She opened her umbrella again, and crossed the 
yard with slower steps. Now she was on the left 
of the terrace. She had made the tour of the estate, 
so that she had returned by the back of the house, 
through the clump of enormous plane trees that on 
this side cast a thick shade. This was the side on 
which opened the two windows of the doctor’s room. 
And she raised her eyes to them, for she had 
approached only in the sudden hope of at last 
seeing him. But the windows remained closed, and 
she was wounded by this as by an unkindness to 
herself. Then only did she perceive that she still 
held in her hand her roll, which she had forgotten 
to eat; and she plunged among the trees, biting it 
impatiently with her fine young teeth. 

It was a delicious retreat, this old quincunx of 
plane trees, another remnant of the past splendor of 
La Souleiade. Under these giant trees, with their 
monstrous trunks, there was only a dim light, a 
greenish light, exquisitely cool, even on the hottest 
days of summer. Formerly a French garden had 
been laid out here, of which only the box borders 


42 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


remained ; bushes which had habituated themselves 
to the shade, no doubt, for they grew vigorously, as 
tall as trees. And the charm of this shady nook 
was a fountain, a simple leaden pipe fixed in the 
shaft of a column; whence flowed perpetually, even 
in the greatest drought, a thread of water as thick 
as the little finger, which supplied a large mossy 
basin, the greenish stones of which were cleaned 
only once in three or four years. When all the 
wells of the neighborhood were dry, La Souleiade 
still kept its spring, of which the great plane trees 
were assuredly the secular children. Night and 
day for centuries past this slender thread of water, 
unvarying and continuous, had sung the same pure 
song with crystal sound. 

Clotilde, after wandering awhile among the bushes 
of box, which reached to her shoulder, went back 
to the house for a piece of embroidery, and return- 
ing with it, sat down at a stone table beside the 
fountain. Some garden chairs had been placed 
around it, and they often took coffee here. And 
after this she affected not to look up again from her 
work, as if she was completely absorbed in it. Now 
and then, while seeming to look between the trunks 
of the trees toward the sultry distance, toward the 
yard, on which the sun blazed fiercely and which 
glowed like a brazier, she stole a glance from under 
her long lashes up to the doctor’s windows. 
Nothing appeared, not a shadow. And a feeling of 
sadness, of resentment, arose within her at this 
neglect, this contempt in which he seemed to hold 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


43 


her after their quarrel of the day before. She who 
had got up with so great a desire to make peace at 
once! He was in no hurry, however; he did not 
love her then, since he could be satisfied to live 
at variance with her. And gradually a feeling 
of gloom took possession of her, her rebellious 
thoughts returned, and she resolved anew to yield 
in nothing. 

At eleven o’clock, before setting her breakfast on 
the fire, Martine came to her for a moment, the 
eternal stocking in her hand which she was always 
knitting even while walking, when she was not 
occupied in the affairs of the house. 

“Do you know that he is still shut up there like a 
wolf in his hole, at his villainous cookery?” 

Clotilde shrugged her shoulders, without lifting 
her eyes from her embroidery. 

“And then, mademoiselle, if you only knew what 
they say! Mme. Felicity was right yesterday when 
she said that it was really enough to make one 
blush. They threw it in my face that he had killed 
old Boutin, that poor old man, you know, who had 
the falling sickness and who died on the road. To 
believe those women of the faubourg, everyone into 
whom he injects his remedy gets the true cholera 
from it, without counting that they accuse him of 
having taken the devil into partnership.” 

A short silence followed. Then, as the young 
girl became more gloomy than before, the servant 
resumed, moving her fingers still more rapidly: 

“As for me, I know nothing about the matter. 


44 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


but what he is making there enrages me. And 
you, mademoiselle, do you approve of that 
cookery?” 

At last Clotilde raised her head quickly, yielding 
to the flood of passion that swept over her. 

‘‘Listen; I wish to know no more about it than 
you do, but I think that he is on a very dangerous 
path. He no longer loves us.” 

“Oh, yes, mademoiselle; he loves us.” 

“No, no; not as we love him. If he loved us, he 
would be here with us, instead of endangering his 
soul and his happiness and ours, up there, in his 
desire to save everybody.” 

And the two women looked at each other for a 
moment with eyes burning with affection, in their 
jealous anger. Then they resumed their work in 
silence, enveloped in shadow. 

Above, in his room, Dr. Pascal was working with 
the serenity of perfect joy. He had practiced his 
profession for only about a dozen years, from his 
return to Paris up to the time when he had retired 
to La Souleiade. Satisfied with the hundred and 
odd thousand francs which he had earned and which 
he had invested prudently, he devoted himself 
almost exclusively to his favorite studies, retaining 
only a practice among friends, never refusing to go 
to the bedside of a patient but never sending in his 
account. When he was paid he threw the money 
into a drawer in his writing desk, regarding this as 
pocket money for his experiments and his caprices, 
apart from his income which sufficed for his wants- 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


45 


And he laughed at the bad reputation for eccen- 
tricity which his way of life had gained him ; he was 
happy only when in the midst of his researches on 
the subjects for which he had a passion. It was 
matter for surprise to many that this scientist, whose 
intellectual gifts had been spoiled by a too lively 
imagination, should have remained at Plassans, this 
out of the way town where it seemed as if every 
requirement for his studies must be wanting. But 
he explained very well the advantages which he had 
discovered here; in the first place, an utterly peace- 
ful retreat in which he might live the secluded life 
he desired; then, an unsuspected field for continu- 
ous research in the light of the facts of heredity, 
which was his passion, in this little town where he 
knew every family and where he could follow the 
phenomena kept most secret, through two or three 
generations. And then he was near the sea- 
shore ; he went there almost every summer, to study 
the swarming life that is born and propagates 
itself in the depths of the vast waters. And there 
was finally, at the hospital in Plassans, a dissecting 
room to which he was almost the only visitor; a 
large, bright, quiet room, in which for more than 
twenty years every unclaimed body had passed 
under his scalpel. A modest man besides, of a 
timidity that had long since become shyness, it had 
been sufficient for him to maintain a correspondence 
with his old professors and his new friends, concern- 
ing the very remarkable papers which he from 
time to time sent to the Academy of Medicine. 


46 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


He was altogether wanting in militant ambi* 
tion. 

Ah, this heredity ! what a subject of endless 
meditation it was for him ! The strangest, the 
most wonderful part of it all, was it not that the 
resemblance between parents and children should 
not be perfect, mathematically exact? He had in 
the beginning made a genealogical tree of his fam- 
ily, logically traced, in which the influences from 
generation to generation were distributed equally 
— the father’s part and the mother’s part. But the 
living reality contradicted the theory almost at 
every point. Heredity, instead of being resem- 
blance, was an effort toward resemblance thwarted 
by circumstances and environment. And he had 
arrived at what he called the hypothesis of the 
abortion of cells. Life is only motion, and heredity 
being a communicated motion, it happened that 
the cells in their multiplication from one another 
jostled one another, pressed one another, made 
room for themselves, putting forth, each one, the 
hereditary effort; so that if during this struggle the 
weaker cells succumbed, considerable disturbances 
took place, with the final result of organs totally 
different. Did not variation, the constant inven- 
tion of nature, which clashed with his theories, 
comeTrom this? Did not he himself differ from his 
parents only in consequence of similar accidents, or 
even as the effect of larvated heredity, in which he 
had for a time believed? For every genealogical 
tree has roots which extend as far back into human- 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


47 


ity as the first man ; one cannot proceed from a 
single ancestor; one may always resemble a still 
older, unknown ancestor. He doubted atavism, 
however; it seemed to him, in spite of a remarkable 
example taken from his own family, that resem- 
blance at the end of two or three generations must 
disappear by reason of accidents, of interferences, 
of a thousand possible combinations. There was 
then a perpetual becoming, a constant transforma- 
tion in this communicated effort, this transmitted 
power, this shock which breathes into matter the 
breath of life, and which is life itself. And a multi- 
plicity of questions presented themselves to him. 
Was there a physical and intellectual progress 
through the ages? Did the brain grow with the 
growth of the sciences with which it occupied itself? 
Might one hope, in time, for a larger sum of reason 
and of happiness? Then there were special prob- 
lems; one among others, the mystery of which had 
for a long time irritated him, that of sex; would 
science never be able to predict, or at least to 
explain the sex of the embryo being? He had 
written a very curious paper crammed full of facts 
on this subject, but which left it in the end in the 
complete ignorance in which the most exhaustive 
researches had left it. Doubtless the question of 
heredity fascinated him as it did only because it 
remained obscure, vast, and unfathomable, like all 
the infant sciences where imagination holds sway. 
Finally, a long study which he had made on the 
heredity of phthisis revived in him the wavering 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


48 

faith of the healer, arousing in him the noble and 
wild hope of regenerating humanity. 

In short, Dr, Pascal had only one belief — the 
belief in life. Life was the only divine manifesta- 
tion. Life was God, the grand motor, the soul of 
the universe. And life had no other instrument 
than heredity; heredity made the world; so that if 
its laws could be known and directed, the world 
could be made to one’s will. In him, to whom 
sickness, suffering, and death had been a familiar 
sight, the militant pity of the physician awoke. 
Ah! to have no more sickness, no more suffering, 
as little death as possible! His dream ended in 
this thought — that universal happiness, the future 
community of perfection and of felicity, could be 
hastened by intervention, by giving health to all. 
When all should be healthy, strong, and intelligent, 
there would be only a superior race, infinitely wise 
and happy. In India, was not a Brahmin developed 
from a Soudra in seven generations, thus raising, 
experimentally, the lowest of beings to the highest 
type of humanity? And as in his study of con- 
sumption he had arrived at the conclusion that it 
was not hereditary, but that every child of a con- 
sumptive carried within him a degenerate soil in 
which consumption developed with extraordinary 
facility at the slightest contagion, he had come to 
think only of invigorating this soil impoverished by 
heredity; to give it the strength to resist the para- 
sites, or rather the destructive leaven, which he had 
suspected to exist in the organism, long before the 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


49 


microbe theory. To give strength — the whole prob- 
lem was there; and to give strength was also to 
give will, to enlarge the brain by fortifying the 
other organs. 

About this time the doctor, reading an old medi- 
cal book of the fifteenth century, was greatly 
struck by a method of treating disease called 
signature. To cure a diseased organ, it was only 
necessary to take from a sheep or an ox the corre- 
sponding organ in sound condition, boil it, and give 
the soup to the patient to drink. The theory was 
to cure like by like, and in diseases of the liver, 
especially, the old work stated that the cures were 
numberless. This set the doctor’s vivid imagination 
working. Why not make the trial? If he wished to 
regenerate those enfeebled by hereditary influences, 
he had only to give them the normal and healthy 
nerve substance. The method of the soup, however, 
seemed to him childish, and he invented in its 
stead that of grinding in a mortar the brain of a 
sheep, moistening it with distilled water, and then 
decanting and filtering the liquor thus obtained. 
He tried this liquor then, mixed with Malaga wine, 
on his patients, without obtaining any appreciable 
result. Suddenly, as he was beginning to grow 
discouraged, he had an inspiration one day, when he 
was giving a lady suffering from hepatic colics an 
injection of morphine with the little syringe of 
Pravaz. What if he were to try hypodermic injec- 
tions with his liquor? And as soon as he returned 
home he tried the experiment on himself, making 


5 ° 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


an injection in his side, which he repeated night 
and morning. The first doses, of a gram only, were 
without effect. But having doubled, and then 
tripled the dose, he was enchanted, one morning on 
getting up, to find that his limbs had all the vigor 
of twenty. He went on increasing the dose up to 
five grams, and then his respiration became deeper, 
and above all he worked with a clearness of mind, 
an ease, which he had not known for years. A 
great flood of happiness, of joy in living, inundated 
his being. From this time, after he had had a 
syringe made at Paris capable of containing five 
grams, he was surprised at the happy results which 
he obtained with his patients, whom he had on 
their feet again in a few days, full of energy and 
activity, as if endowed with new life. His method 
was still tentative and rude, and he divined in it all 
sorts of dangers, and especially, that of inducing 
embolism, if the liquor was not perfectly pure. 
Then he suspected that the strength of his patients 
came in part from the fever his treatment produced 
in them. But he was only a pioneer; the method 
would improve later. Was it not already a miracle to 
make the ataxic walk, to bring consumptives back 
to life, as it were; even to give hours of lucidity to 
the insane? And at the thought of this discovery 
of the alchemy of the twentieth century, an immense 
hope opened up before him ; he believed he had 
discovered the universal panacea, the elixir of life, 
which was to combat human debility, the one real 
cause of every ill; a veritable scientific Fountain 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


5 1 


of Youth, which, in giving vigor, health, and will, 
would create an altogether new and superior 
humanity. 

This particular morning in his chamber, a room 
with a northern aspect and somewhat dark owing 
to the vicinity of the plane trees, furnished simply 
with an iron bedstead, a mahogany writing desk, 
and a large writing table, on which were a mortar 
and a microscope, he was completing with infinite 
care the preparation of a vial of his liquor. Since 
the day before, after pounding the nerve substance 
of a sheep in distilled water, he had been decanting 
and filtering it. And he had at last obtained a 
small bottle of a turbid, opaline liquid, irised by 
bluish gleams, which he regarded for a long time in 
the light as if he held in his hand the regenerating 
blood and symbol of the world. 

But a few light knocks at the door, and an urgent 
voice drew him from his dream. 

“Why, what is the matter, monsieur? It is a 
quarter-past twelve; don’t you intend to come to 
breakfast ?” 

For downstairs breakfast had been waiting for 
some time past in the large, cool dining room. 
The blinds were closed, with the exception of one 
which had just been half opened. It was a cheerful 
room, with pearl gray panels relieved by blue mold- 
ings. The table, the sideboard, and the chairs 
must have formed part of the set of Empire furni- 
ture in the bedrooms; and the old mahogany, of a 
deep red, stood out in strong relief against the light 


52 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


background. A hanging lamp of polished brass, 
always shining, gleamed like a sun; while on the 
four walls bloomed four large bouquets in pastel, of 
gillyflowers, carnations, hyacinths, and roses. 

Joyous, radiant, Dr. Pascal entered. 

“Ah, the deuce! I had forgotten! I wanted to 
finish. Look at this, quite fresh, and perfectly 
pure this time; something to work miracles 
with !” 

And he showed the vial, which he had brought 
down in his enthusiasm. But his eye fell on 
Clotilde standing erect and silent, with a serious 
air. The secret vexation caused by waiting had 
brought back all her hostility, and she, who had 
burned to throw herself on his neck in the morning, 
remained motionless as if chilled and repelled 
by him. 

“Good!” he resumed, without losing anything of 
his gayety, “we are still at odds, it seems. That is 
something very ugly. So you don’t admire my 
sorcerer’s liquor, which resuscitates the dead?” 

He seated himself at the table, and the young 
girl, sitting down opposite him, was obliged at last 
to answer. 

“You know well, master, that I admire everything 
belonging to you. Only, my most ardent desire 
is that others also should admire you. And there 
is the death of poor old Boutin ” 

“Oh!” he cried, without letting her finish, “an 
epileptic, who succumbed to a congestive attack! 
See! since you are in a bad humor, let us talk no 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 53 

more about that — you would grieve me, and that 
would spoil my day.” 

There were soft boiled eggs, cutlets, and cream. 
Silence reigned for a few moments, duiing which 
in spite of her ill-humor she ate heartily, with a 
good appetite which she had not the coquetry to 
conceal. Then he resumed, laughing: 

“What reassures me is to see that your stomach 
is in good order. Martine, hand mademoiselle the 
bread.” 

The servant waited on them as she was accus- 
tomed to do, watching them eat, with her quiet air 
of familiarity. Sometimes she even chatted with 
them. 

“Monsieur,” she said, when she had cut the 
bread, “the butcher has brought his bill. Is he to 
be paid?” 

He looked up at her in surprise. 

“Why do you ask me that?” he said. “Do you 
not always pay him without consulting me?” 

It was, in effect, Martine who kept the purse. 
The amount deposited with M. Grandguillot, notary 
at Plassans, produced a round sum of six thousand 
francs income. Every three months the fifteen 
hundred francs were remitted to the servant, and 
she disposed of them to the best interests of the 
house ; bought and paid for everything with the 
strictest economy, for she was of so saving a dis- 
position that they bantered her about jt continually. 
Clotilde, who spent very little, had never thought 
of asking a separate purse for herself. As for the 


54 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


doctor, he took what he required for his experi- 
ments and his pocket money from the three or four 
thousand francs which he still earned every year, 
and which he kept lying in the drawer of his writing 
desk; so that there was quite a little treasure there 
in gold and bank bills, of which he never knew the 
exact amount. 

“Undoubtedly, monsieur, I pay, when it is I who 
have bought the things; but this time the bill is 
so large on account of the brains which the butcher 
has furnished you ” 

The doctor interrupted her brusquely : 

“Ah, come! so you, too, are going to set your- 
self against me, are you? No, no; both of you — 
that would be too much! Yesterday you pained 
me greatly, and I was angry. But this must cease. 
I will not have the house turned into a hell. Two 
women against me, and they the only ones who 
love me at all! Do you know, I would sooner quit 
the house at once!” 

He did not speak angrily, he even smiled ; but the 
disquietude of his heart was perceptible in the 
trembling of his voice. And he added with his 
indulgent, cheerful air: 

“If you are afraid for the end of the month, my 
girl, tell the butcher to send my bill apart. And 
don’t fear; you are not going to be asked for any of 
your money to settle it with ; your sous may lie 
sleeping.” 

This was an allusion to Martine’s little personal 
fortune. In thirty years, with four hundred francs 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


55 


wages she had earned twelve thousand francs, 
from which she had taken only what was strictly 
necessary for her wants; and increased, almost 
trebled, by the interest, her savings amounted now 
to thirty thousand francs, which through a caprice, 
a desire to have her money apart, she had not 
chosen to place with M. Grandguillot. They were 
elsewhere, safely invested in the funds. 

“Sous that lie sleeping are honest sous,” she said 
gravely. “But monsieur is right; I will tell the 
butcher to send a bill apart, as all the brains are for 
monsieur’s cookery and not for mine.” 

This explanation brought a smile to the face of 
Clotilde, who was always amused by the jests about 
Martine’s avarice ; and the breakfast ended more 
cheerfully. The doctor desired to take the coffee 
under the plane trees, saying that he felt the need 
of air after being shut up all the morning. The 
coffee was served then on the stone table beside 
the fountain ; and how pleasant it was there in the 
shade, listening to the cool murmur of the water, 
while around, the pine wood, the court, the whole 
place, were glowing in the early afternoon sun. 

The doctor had complacently brought with him 
the vial of nerve substance, which he looked at as it 
stood on the table. 

“So, then, mademoiselle,” he resumed, with an 
air of brusque pleasantry, “you do not believe in my 
elixir of resurrection, and you believe in miracles!” 

“Master,” responded Clotilde, “I believe that we 
do not know everything.” 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


5o 


He made a gesture of impatience. 

“But we must know everything. Understand 
then, obstinate little girl, that not a single devia- 
tion from the invariable laws which govern the 
universe has ever been scientifically proved. Up 
to this day there has been no proof of the existence 
of any intelligence other than the human. I defy 
you to find any real will, any reasoning force, out- 
side of life. And everything is there; there is in 
the world no other will than this force which impels 
everything to life, to a life ever broader and higher.” 

He rose with a wave of the hand, animated by 
so firm a faith that she regarded him in surprise, 
noticing how youthful he looked in spite of his 
white hair. 

“Do you wish me to repeat my ‘Credo’ for you, 
since you accuse me of not wanting yours? I be- 
lieve that the future of humanity is in the prog- 
ress of reason through science. I believe that the 
pursuit of truth, through science, is the divine ideal 
which man should propose to himself. I believe 
that all is illusion and vanity outside the treasure 
of truths slowly accumulated, and which will never 
again be lost. I believe that the sum of these 
truths, always increasing, will at last confer on 
man incalculable power and peace, if not happi- 
ness. Yes, I believe in the final triumph of life.” 

And with a broader sweep of the hand that took 
in the vast horizon, as if calling on these burning 
plains in which fermented the saps of all existences 
to bear him witness, he added : 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 57 

“But the continual miracle, my child, is life. 
Only open your eyes, and look.” 

She shook her head. 

“It is in vain that I open my eyes; I cannot see 
everything. It is you, master, who are blind, since 
you do not wish to admit that there is beyond an 
unknown realm which you will never enter. Oh, I 
know you are too intelligent to be ignorant of that ! 
Only you do not wish to take it into account; you 
put the unknown aside, because it would embarrass 
you in your researches. It is in vain that you tell 
me to put aside the mysterious; to start from the 
known for the conquest of the unknown. I can- 
not ; the mysterious at once calls me back and dis- 
turbs me.” 

He listened to her, smiling, glad to see her become 
animated, while he smoothed her fair curls with his 
hand. 

“Yes, yes, I know you are like the rest; you do 
not wish to live without illusions and without lies. 
Weil, there, there ; we understand each other still, 
even so. Keep well ; that is the half of wisdom and 
of happiness.” 

Then, changing the conversation: 

“Come, you will accompany me, notwithstanding, 
and help me in my round of miracles. This is 
Thursday, my visiting day. When the heat shall 
have abated a little, we will go out together.” 

She refused at first, in order not to seem to yield ; 
but she at last consented, seeing the pain she gave 
him. She was accustomed to accompany him on 


5 ^ 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


his round of visits. They remained for some time 
longer under the plane trees, until the doctor went 
upstairs to dress. When he came down again, 
correctly attired in a close-fitting coat and wearing 
a broad-brimmed silk hat, he spoke of harnessing 
Bonhomme, the horse that for a quarter of a cen- 
tury had taken him on his visits through the 
streets and the environs of Plassans. But the poor 
old beast was growing blind, and through gratitude 
for his past services and affection for himself they 
now rarely disturbed him. On this afternoon he 
was very drowsy, his gaze wandered, his legs were 
stiff with rheumatism. So that the doctor and the 
young girl, when they went to the stable to see 
him, gave him a hearty kiss on either side of his 
nose, telling him to rest on a bundle of fresh hay 
which the servant had brought. And they decided 
to walk. 

Clotilde, keeping on her spotted white muslin, 
merely tied on over her curls a large straw hat 
adorned with a bunch of lilacs; and she looked 
charming, with her large eyes and her complexion 
of milk-and-roses under the shadow of its broad 
brim. When she went out thus on Pascal’s arm, 
she tall, slender, and youthful, he radiant, his face 
illuminated, so to say, by the whiteness of his 
beard, with a vigor that made him still lift her 
across the rivulets, people smiled as they passed, 
and turned around to look at them again, they 
seemed so innocent and so happy. On this day, as 
they left the road to Les Fenouilleres to enter 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


59 


Plassans, a group of gossips stopped short in their 
talk. It reminded one of one of those ancient 
kings one sees in pictures; one of those powerful 
and gentle kings who never grow old, resting his 
hand on the shoulder of a girl beautiful as the day, 
whose docile and dazzling youth lends him its 
support. 

They were turning into the Cours Sauvaire to 
gain the Rue de la Banne, when a tall, dark young 
man of about thirty stopped them. 

‘'Ah, master, you have forgotten me. I am still 
waiting for your notes on consumption.” 

It was Dr. Ramond, a young physician, who had 
settled two years before at Plassans, where he was 
building up a fine practice. With a superb head, in 
the brilliant prime of a gracious manhood, he was 
adored by the women, but he had fortunately a 
great deal of good sense and a great deal of 
prudence. 

‘‘Why, Ramond, good-day! Not at all, my dear 
friend; I have not forgotten you. It is this little 
girl, to whom I gave the notes yesterday to copy,^ 
and who has not touched them yet.” 

The two young people shook hands with an air 
of cordial intimacy. 

“Good-day, Mile. Clotilde.” 

“Good-day, M. Ramond.” 

During a gastric fever, happily mild, which the 
young girl had had the preceding year, Dr. Pascal 
had lost his head to the extent of distrusting his 
own skill, and he had asked his young colleague to 


6 o 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


assist him — to reassure him. Thus it was that an 
intimacy, a sort o'f comradeship, had sprung up 
among the three. 

'‘You shall have your notes to-morrow, I promise 
you,” she said, smiling. 

Ramond walked on with them, however, until 
they reached the end of the Rue de la Banne, at 
the entrance of the old quarter whither they were 
going. And there was in the manner in which lie 
leaned, smiling, toward Clotilde, the revelation of a 
secret love that had grown slowly, awaiting 
patiently the hour fixed for the most reasonable of 
denouements. Besides, he listened with deference 
to Dr. Pascal, whose works he admired greatly. 

“And it just happens, my dear friend, that I am 
going to Guiraude’s, that woman, you know, whose 
husband, a tanner, died of consumption five years 
ago. She has two children living — Sophie, a girl 
now going on sixteen, whom I fortunately suc- 
ceeded in having sent four years before her father’s 
death to a neighboring village, to one of her 
aunts; and a son, Valentin, who has just completed 
his twenty-first year, and whom his mother insisted 
on keeping with her through a blind affection, not- 
withstanding that I warned her of the dreadful 
results that might ensue. Well, see if I am right 
in asserting that consumption is not hereditary, but 
only that consumptive parents transmit to their 
children a degenerate soil, in which the disease 
develops at the slightest contagion. Now, Valen- 
tin, who lived in daily contact with his father, is 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


6 1 


consumptive, while Sophie, who grew up in the 
open air, has superb health.” 

He added with a triumphant smile: 

“But that will not prevent me, perhaps, from 
saving Valentin, for he is visibly improved, and is 
growing fat since I have used my injections with 
him. Ah, Ramond, you will come to them yet; 
you will come to my injections!” 

The young physician shook hands with both of 
them, saying: 

“I don’t say no. You know that I am always 
with you.” 

When they were alone they quickened their 
steps and were soon in the Rue Canquoin, one of 
the narrowest and darkest streets of the old quarter. 
Hot as was the sun, there reigned here the semi- 
obscurity and the coolness of a cave. Here it was, 
on a ground floor, that Guiraude lived with her son 
Valentin. She opened the door herself. She was 
a thin, wasted looking woman, who was herself 
affected with a slow decomposition of the blood. 
From morning till night she crushed almonds with 
the end of an ox-bone on a large paving stone, 
which she held between her knees. This work was 
their only means of living, the son having been 
obliged to give up all labor. She smiled, however, 
to-day on seeing the doctor, for Valentin had just 
eaten a cutlet with a good appetite, a thing which 
he had not done for months. Valentin, a sickly- 
looking young man, with scanty hair and beard and 
prominent cheek bones, on each of which was a 


62 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


bright red spot, while the rest of his face was of a 
waxen hue, rose quickly to show how much more 
sprightly he felt ! And Clotilde was touched by 
the reception given to Pascal as a savior, the 
awaited Messiah. These poor people pressed his 
hands — they would like to have kissed his feet ; 
looking at him with eyes shining with gratitude. 
True, the disease was not yet cured; perhaps this 
was only the effect of the stimulus, perhaps what 
he felt was only the excitement of fever. But was 
it not something to gain time? He gave him 
another injection while Clotilde, standing before 
the window, turned her back to them ; and when 
they were leaving she saw him lay twenty francs 
upon the table. This often happened to him, to 
pay his patients instead of being paid by them. 

He made three other visits in the old quarter, 
and then went to see a lady in the new town. 
When they found themselves in the street again, he 
said : 

“Do you know that, if you were a courageous girl, 
we should walk to Seguiranne, to see Sophie at 
her aunt’s. That would give me pleasure.” 

The distance was scarcely three kilometers; that 
would be only a pleasant walk in this delightful 
weather. And she agreed gayly, not sulky now, 
but pressing close to him, happy to hang on his 
arm. It was five o’clock. The setting sun spread 
over the fields a great sheet of gold. But as soon 
as they left Plassans they were obliged to cross the 
corner of the vast, arid plain, which extended to 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


63 


the right of the Viorne. The new canal, whose 
irrigating waters were soon to transform the face of 
the country parched with thirst, did not yet water 
this quarter, and red fields and yellow fields 
stretched away into the distance under the melan- 
choly and blighting glare of the sun, planted only 
with puny almond trees and dwarf olives, constantly 
cut down and pruned, whose branches twisted and 
writhed in attitudes of suffering and revolt. In the 
distance, on the bare hillsides, were to be seen only 
like pale patches the country houses, flanked by the 
regulation cypress. The vast, barren expanse, how- 
ever, with broad belts of desolate fields of hard and 
distinct coloring, had classic lines of a severe 
grandeur. And on the road the dust lay twenty 
centimeters thick, a dust like snow, that the slight- 
est breath of wind raised in broad, flying clouds, 
and that covered with white powder the fig trees 
and the brambles on either side. 

Clotilde, who amused herself like a child, listening 
to this dust crackling under her little feet, wished 
to hold her parasol over Pascal. 

“You have the sun in your eyes. Lean a little 
this way.” 

But at last he took possession of the parasol, to 
hold it himself. 

“It is you who do not hold it right; and then it 
tires you. Besides, we are almost there now.” 

In the parched plain they could already perceive 
an island of verdure, an enormous clump of trees. 
This was La S£guiranne, the farm on which Sophie 


6 4 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


had grown up in the house of her Aunt Dieudonn£, 
the wife of the cross old man. Wherever there was 
a spring, wherever there was a rivulet, this ardent 
soil broke out in rich vegetation ; and then there 
were walks bordered by trees, whose luxuriant 
foliage afforded a delightful coolness and shade. 
Plane trees, chestnut trees, and young elms grew 
vigorously. They entered an avenue of magnificent 
green oaks. 

As they approached the farm, a girl who was 
making hay in the meadow dropped her fork and 
ran toward them. It was Sophie, who had recog- 
nized the doctor and the young lady, as she called 
Clotilde. She adored them, but she stood looking 
at them in confusion, unable to express the glad 
greeting with which her heart overflowed. She 
resembled her brother Valentin ; she had his small 
stature, his prominent cheek bones, his pale hair; 
but in the country, far from the contagion of the 
paternal environment, she had, it seemed, gained 
flesh; acquired with her robust limbs a firm step; 
her cheeks had filled out, her hair had grown lux- 
uriant. And she had fine eyes, which shone with 
health and gratitude. Her Aunt Dieudonn6, who 
was making hay with her, had come toward them 
also, crying from afar jestingly, with something of 
Provencal rudeness: 

“Ah, M. Pascal, we have no need of you here ! 
There is no one sick!’' 

The doctor, who had simply come in search of this 
fine spectacle of health, answered in the same tone : 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


6 5 

I hope so, indeed. But that does not prevent 
this little girl here from owing you and me a fine 
taper!” 

“Well, that is the pure truth! And she knows 
it, M. Pascal. There is not a day that she does not 
say that but for you she would be at this time like 
her brother Valentin.” 

“Bah! We will save him, too. He is getting 
better, Valentin is. I have just been to see him.” 

Sophie seized the doctor’s hands; large tears 
stood in her eyes, and she could only stammer: 

“Oh, M. Pascal!” 

How they loved him ! And Clotilde felt her 
affection for him increase, seeing the affection of all 
these people for him. They remained chatting 
there for a few moments longer, in the salubrious 
shade of the green oaks. Then they took the road 
back to Plassans, having still another visit to make. 

This was to a tavern, that stood at the crossing of 
two roads and was white with the flying dust. A 
steam mill had recently been established opposite, 
utilizing the old buildings of Le Paradou, an estate 
dating from the last century, and Lafouasse, the 
tavern keeper, still carried on his little business, 
thanks to the workmen at the mill and to the peas- 
ants who brought their corn to it. He had still for 
customers on Sundays the few inhabitants of Les 
Artauds, a neighboring hamlet. But misfortune 
had struck him ; for the last three years he had 
been dragging himself about groaning with rheu- 
matism, in which the doctor had finally recognized 


66 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


the beginning of ataxia. But he had obstinately 
refused to take a servant, persisting in waiting on 
his customers himself, holding on by the furniture. 
So that once more firm on his feet, after a dozen 
punctures, he already proclaimed his cure every- 
where. 

He chanced to be just then at his door, and 
looked strong and vigorous, with his tall figure, 
fiery face, and fiery red hair. 

“I was waiting for you, M. Pascal. Do you know 
that I have been able to bottle two casks of wine 
without being tired !” 

Clotilde remained outside, sitting on a stone 
bench, while Pascal entered the room to give 
Lafouasse the injection. She could hear them 
speaking, and the latter, who in spite of his stout- 
ness was very cowardly in regard to pain, com- 
plained that the puncture hurt, adding, however, 
that after all a little suffering was a small price to 
pay for good health. Then he declared he would 
be offended if the doctor did not take a glass of 
something. The young lady would not affront him 
by refusing to take some syrup. He carried a table 
outside, and there was nothing for it but they 
must touch glasses with him. 

“To your health, M. Pascal, and to the health of 
all the poor devils to whom you give back a relish 
for their victuals !” 

Clotilde thought with a smile of the gossip of 
which Martine had spoken to her, of Father Boutin, 
whom they accused the doctor of having killed. 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


6 7 


He did not kill all his patients, then ; his remedy 
worked real miracles, since he brought back to life 
the consumptive and the ataxic. And her faith in 
her master returned with the warm affection for 
him which welled up in her heart. When they left 
Lafouasse, she was once more completely his; he 
could do what he willed with her. 

But a few moments before, sitting on the stone 
bench looking at the steam mill, a confused story 
had recurred to her mind; was it not here in these 
smoke-blackened buildings, to-day white with flour, 
that a drama of love had once been enacted? And 
the story came back to her; details given by Mar- 
tine; allusions made by the doctor himself; the 
whole tragic love adventure of her cousin the Abbe 
Serge Mouret, then rector of Les Artauds, with an 
adorable young girl of a wild and passionate nature 
who lived at Le Paradou. 

Returning by the same road Clotilde stopped, 
and pointing to the vast, melancholy expanse of 
stubble fields, cultivated plains, and fallow land, 
said : 

“Master, was there not once there a large garden? 
Did you not tell me some story about it?” 

“Yes, yes; Le Paradou, an immense garden — 
woods, meadows, orchards, parterres, fountains, and 
brooks that flowed into the Viorne. A garden 
abandoned for an age; the garden of the Sleeping 
Beauty, returned to Nature’s rule. And as you 
see they have cut down the woods, and cleared and 
leveled the ground, to divide it into lots, and sell it 


68 


DOCTOR RASCAL . 


by auction. The springs themselves have dried up. 
There is nothing there now but that fever-breeding 
marsh. Ah, when I pass by here, it makes my 
heart ache !” 

She ventured to question him further: 

“But was it not in Le Paradou that my cousin 
Serge and your great friend Albine fell in love with 
each other?” 

He had forgotten her presence. He went on 
talking, his gaze fixed on space, lost in recollections 
of the past. 

“Albine, my God! I can sec her now, in the 
sunny garden, like a great, fragrant bouquet, her 
head thrown back, her bosom swelling with joy, 
happy in her flowers, with wild flowers braided 
among her blond tresses, fastened at ’her throat, on 
her corsage, around her slender, bare brown arms. 
And I can see her again, after she had asphyxiated 
herself; dead in the midst of her flowers; very 
white, sleeping with folded hands, and a smile on 
her lips on her couch of hyacinths and tuberoses. 
Dead for love; and how passionately Albine and 
Serge loved each other, in the great garden their 
tempter, in the bosom of Nature their accomplice! 
And what a flood of life swept away all false bonds, 
and what a triumph of life!” 

Clotilde, she too troubled by this passionate 
flow of murmured words, gazed at him intently. She 
had never ventured to speak to him of another 
story that she had heard — the story of the one love 
of his life— a love which he had cherished in secret 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


69 


for a lady now dead. It was said that he had 
attended her for a long time without ever so much 
as venturing to kiss the tips of her fingers. Up to 
the present, up to near sixty, study and his natural 
timidity had made him shun women. But, not- 
withstanding, one felt that he was reserved for some 
great passion, with his feelings still fresh and ardent, 
in spite of his white hair. 

“And the girl that died, the girl they 
mourned, ” she resumed, her voice trembling, her 
cheeks scarlet, without knowing why. “Serge did 
not love her, then, since he let her die?” 

Pascal started as though awakening from a 
dream, seeing her beside him in her youthful 
beauty, with her large, clear eyes shining under the 
shadow of her broad-brimmed hat. Something had 
happened ; the same breath of life had passed 
through them both ; they did not take each other’s 
arms again. They walked side by side. 

“Ah, my dear, the world would be too beautiful, 
if men did not spoil it all! Albine is dead, and 
Serge is now rector of St. Eutrope, where he lives 
with his sister Desiree, a worthy creature who has 
the good fortune to be half an idiot. He is a holy 
man ; I have never said the contrary. One may be 
an assassin and serve God.’’ 

And he went on speaking of the hard things of 
life, of the blackness and execrableness of human- 
ity, without losing his gentle smile. He loved life; 
and the continuous work of life was a continual joy 
to him in spite of all the evil, all the misery, that it 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


7 W 

might contain. It mattered not how dreadful life 
might appear, it must be great and good, since it 
was lived with so tenacious a will, for the purpose 
no doubt of this will itself, and of the great work 
which it unconsciously accomplished. True, he 
was a scientist, a clear-sighted man ; he did not 
believe in any idyllic humanity living in a world 
of perpetual peace ; he saw, on the contrary, its 
woes and its vices ; he had laid them bare ; he 
had examined them ; he had catalogued them for 
thirty years past, but his passion for life, his admi- 
ration for the forces of life, sufficed to produce in 
him a perpetual gayety, whence seemed to flow 
naturally his love for others, a fraternal compassion, 
a sympathy, which were felt under the roughness of 
the anatomist and under the affected impersonality 
of his studies. 

“Bah !” he ended, taking a last glance at the vast, 
melancholy plains. “Le Paradou is no more. 
They have sacked it, defiled it, destroyed it; but 
what does that matter! Vines will be planted, corn 
will spring up, a whole growth of new crops; and 
people will still fall in love in vintages and harvests 
yet to come. Life is eternal; it is a perpetual 
renewal of birth and growth.” 

He took her arm again and they returned to the 
town thus, arm in arm like good friends, while the 
glow of the sunset was slowly fading away in a 
tranquil sea of violets and roses. And seeing them 
both pass again, the ancient king, powerful and 
gentle, leaning against the shoulder of a charming 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


71 


and docile girl, supported by her youth, the women 
of the faubourg, sitting at their doors, looked after 
them with a smile of tender emotion. 

At La Souleiade Martine was watching for them. 
She waved her hand to them from afar. What ! 
Were they not going to dine to-day? Then, when 
they were near, she said : 

<4 Ah! you will have to wait a little while. I did 
not venture to put on my leg of mutton yet.” 

They remained outside to enjoy the charm of 
the closing day. The pine grove, wrapped in 
shadow, exhaled a balsamic, resinous odor, and 
from the yard, still heated, in which a last red 
gleam was dying away, a chillness arose. It was 
like an assuagement, a sigh of relief, a resting of 
surrounding Nature, of the puny almond trees, the 
twisted olives, under the paling sky, cloudless and 
serene ; while at the back of the house the clump 
of plane trees was a mass of black and impenetrable 
shadows, where the fountain was heard singing its 
eternal crystal song. 

“Look!” said the doctor, “M. Bellombre has 
already dined, and he is taking the air.” 

He pointed to a bench, on which a tall, thin old 
man of seventy was sitting, with a long face, fur- 
rowed with wrinkles, and large, staring eyes, and very 
correctly attired in a close-fitting coat and cravat. 

“He is a wise man,” murmured Clotilde. “He is 
h^ppy.” 

“He!” cried Pascal. “I should hope not!” 

He hated no one, and M. Bellombre, the old 


72 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


college professor, now retired, and living in his little 
house without any other company than that of a 
gardener who was deaf and dumb and older than 
himself, was the only person who had the power to 
exasperate him. 

“A fellow who has been afraid of life; think .of 
that! afraid of life! Yes, a hard and avaricious 
egotist ! If he banished woman from his existence, 
it was only through fear of having to pay for her 
shoes. And he has known only the children of 
others, who have made him suffer — hence his hatred 
of the child — that flesh made to be flogged. The 
fear of life, the fear of burdens and of duties, of 
annoyances and of catastrophes! The fear of life, 
which makes us through dread of its sufferings 
refuse its joys! Ah! I tell you, this cowardliness 
enrages me; I cannot forgive it. We must live — 
live a complete life — live all our life. Better even 
suffering, suffering only, than such renunciation — the 
death of all there is in us that is living and human !” 

M. Bellombre had risen, and was walking along 
one of the walks with slow, tranquil steps. Then, 
Clotilde, who had been watching him in silence, at 
last said : 

“There is, however, the joy of renunciation. To 
renounce, not to live; to keep one’s self for the 
spiritual, has not this always been the great happi- 
ness of the saints?” 

“If they had not lived,” cried Pascal, “they could 
not now be saints. Let suffering come, and I will 
bless it, for it is perhaps the only great happiness !” 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


73 


But he felt that she rebelled against this; that he 
was going to lose her again. At the bottom of our 
anxiety about the beyond is the secret fear and 
hatred of life. So that he hastily assumed again 
his pleasant smile, so affectionate and conciliating. 

“No, no! Enough for to-day; let us dispute no 
more; let us love each other dearly. And see! 
Martine is calling us, let us go in to dinner.” 


III. 


For a month this unpleasant state of affairs con- 
tinued, every day growing worse, and Clotilde 
suffered especially at seeing that Pascal now locked 
up everything. He had no longer the same tran- 
quil confidence in her as before, and this wounded 
her so deeply that, if she had at any time found the 
press open, she would have thrown the papers into 
the fire as her grandmother Felicite had urged her 
to do. And the disagreements began again, so 
that they often remained without speaking to each 
other for two days together. 

One morning, after one of these misunderstand- 
ings which had lasted since the day before, Martine 
said as she was serving the breakfast : 

“Just now as I was crossing the Place de la 
Sous-Prefecture, I saw a stranger whom I thought 
I recognized going into Mme. Felicity’s house. 
Yes, mademoiselle, I should not be surprised if it 
were your brother.” 

On the impulse of the moment, Pascal and 
Clotilde spoke. 

“Your brother! Did your grandmother expect 
him, then?” 

“No, I don’t think so, though she has been 
expecting him at any time for the past six months. 
I know that she wrote to him again a week ago.” 


74 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


75 


They questioned Martine. 

“Indeed, monsieur, I cannot say; since I last saw 
M. Maxime four years ago, when he stayed two 
hours with us on his way to Italy, he may perhaps 
have changed greatly — I thought, however, that I 
recognized his back.” 

The conversation continued, Clotilde seeming 
to be glad of this event, which broke at last the 
oppressive silence between them, and Pascal ended : 

“Well, if it is he, he will come to see us.” 

It was indeed Maxime. He had yielded, after 
months of refusal, to the urgent solicitations of old 
Mine. Rougon, who had still in this quarter an 
open family wound to heal. The trouble was an 
old one, and it grew worse every day. 

Fifteen years before, when he was seventeen, 
Maxime had had a child by a servant whom he 
had seduced. His father Saccard, and his step- 
mother Renee — the latter vexed more especially at 
his unworthy choice — had acted in the matter with 
indulgence. The servant, Justine Megot, belonged 
to one of the neighboring villages, and was a fair- 
haired girl, also seventeen, gentle and docile; and 
they had sent her back to Plassans, with an allow- 
ance of twelve hundred francs a year, to bring up 
little Charles. Three years later she had married 
there a harness-maker of the faubourg, Frederic 
Thomas by name, a good workman and a sensible 
fellow, who was tempted by the allowance. For the 
rest her conduct was now most exemplary, she had 
grown fat, and she appeared to be cured of a cough 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


76 

that had threatened a hereditary malady due to the 
alcoholic propensities of a long line of progenitors. 
And two other children born of her marriage, a boy 
who was now ten and a girl who was seven, both 
plump and rosy, enjoyed perfect health ; so that 
she would have been the most respected and the 
happiest of women, if it had not been for the 
trouble which Charles caused in the household. 
Thomas, notwithstanding the allowance, execrated 
this son of another man and gave him no peace, 
which made the mother suffer in secret, being an 
uncomplaining and submissive wife. So that, 
although she adored him, she would willingly have 
given him up to his father’s family. 

Charles, at fifteen, seemed scarcely twelve, and 
he had the infantine intelligence of a child of five, 
resembling in an extraordinary degree his great- 
great-grandmother, Aunt Dide, the madwoman at 
the Tulettes. He had the slender and delicate grace 
of one of those bloodless little kings with whom a 
race ends, crowned with their long, fair locks, light 
as spun silk. His large, clear eyes were expression- 
less, and on his disquieting beauty lay the shadow 
of death. And he had neither brain nor heart — he 
was nothing but a vicious little dog, who rubbed 
himself against people to be fondled. His great- 
grandmother Felicite, won by this beauty, in 
which she affected to recognize her blood, had at 
first put him in a boarding school, taking charge of 
him, but he had been expelled from it at the end of 
six months for misconduct. Three times she had 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


77 


changed his boarding school, and each time he had 
been expelled in disgrace. Then, as he neither 
would nor could learn anything, and as his health 
was declining rapidly, they kept him at home, send- 
ing him from one to another of the family. Dr. 
Pascal, moved to pity, had tried to cure him, and 
had abandoned the hopeless task only after he had 
kept him with him for nearly a year, fearing the 
companionship for Clotilde. And now, when 
Charles was not at his mother’s, where he scarcely 
ever lived at present, he was to be found at the 
house of Felicite, or that of some other relative, 
prettily dressed, laden with toys, living like the 
effeminate little dauphin of an ancient and fallen 
race. 

Old Mme. Rougon, however, suffered because of 
this bastard, and she had planned to get him away 
from the gossiping tongues of Plassans, by persuad- 
ing Maxime to take him and keep him with him in 
Paris. It would still be an ugly story of the fallen 
family. But Maxime had for a long time turned a 
deaf ear to her solicitations, in the fear which con- 
tinually haunted him of spoiling his life. After the 
war, enriched by the death of his wife, he had come 
back to live prudently on his fortune in his man- 
sion on the avenue of the Bois de Boulogne, tor- 
mented by the hereditary malady of which he was 
to die young, having gained from his precocious 
debauchery a salutary fear of pleasure, resolved 
above all to shun emotions and responsibilities, so 
that he might last as long as possible. Acute pains 


78 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


in the limbs, rheumatic he thought them, had 
been alarming him for some time past ; he saw 
himself in fancy already an invalid tied down to 
an easy-chair; and his father’s sudden return to 
France, the fresh activity which Saccard was put- 
ting forth, completed his disquietude. He knew 
well this devourer of millions; he trembled at find- 
ing him again bustling about him with his good- 
humored, malicious laugh. He felt that he was 
being watched, and he had the conviction that he 
would be cut up and devoured if he should be for a 
single day at his mercy, rendered helpless by the 
pains which were invading his limbs. And so great 
a fear of solitude had taken possession of him that 
he had now yielded to the idea of seeing his son 
again. If he found the boy gentle, intelligent, and 
healthy, why should he not take him to live with 
him? He would thus have a companion, an heir, | 
who would protect him against the machinations of 
his father. Gradually he came to see himself, in his 
selfish forethought, loved, petted, and protected; 
yet for all that he might not have risked such a 
journey, if his physician had not just at that time 
sent him to the waters of St. Gervais. Thus, 
having to go only a few leagues out of his way, he 
had dropped in unexpectedly that morning on old 
Mme. Rougon, firmly resolved to take the train 
again in the evening, after having questioned her 
and seen the boy. 

At two o’clock Pascal and Clotilde were still 
beside the fountain under the plane trees, where 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 79 

they had taken their coffee, when Felicite arrived 
with Maxime. 

“My dear, here’s a surprise! I have brought you 
your brother.” 

Startled, the young girl had risen, seeing this 
thin and sallow stranger, whom she scarcely recog- 
nized. Since their parting in 1854 she had seen 
him only twice, once at Paris and again at Plassans. 
Yet his image, refined, elegant, and vivacious, had 
remained engraven on her mind ; his face had grown 
hollow, his hair was streaked with silver threads. 
But notwithstanding, she found in him still, with 
his delicately handsome head, a languid grace, like 
that of a girl, even in his premature decrepitude. 

“How well you look!” he said simply, as he 
embraced his sister. 

“But,” she responded, “to be well one must live 
in the sunshine. Ah, how happy it makes me to 
see you again !” 

Pascal, with the eye of the physician, had exam- 
ined his nephew critically. He embraced him in 
his turn. 

“Good-day, my boy. And she is right, mind 
you ; one can be well only out in the sunshine — like 
the trees.” 

Felicite had gone hastily to the house. She 
returned, crying : 

“Charles is not here, then?” 

“No,” said Clotilde. “We went to see him yes- 
terday. Uncle Macquart has taken him, and he is 
to remain for a few days at the Tulettes.” 


8o 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


Felicite was in despair. She had come only in 
the certainty of finding the boy at Pascal’s. What 
was to be done now? The doctor, with his tranquil 
air, proposed to write to Uncle Macquart, who 
would bring him back in the morning. But when 
he learned that Maxime wished positively to go 
away again by the nine o’clock train, without 
remaining overnight, another idea occurred to him. 
He would send to the livery stable for a landau, 
and all four would go to see Charles at Uncle 
Macquart’s. It would even be a delightful drive. 
It was not quite three leagues from Plassans to the 
Tulettes — an hour to go, and an hour to return, 
and they would still have almost two hours to 
remain there, if they wished to be back by seven. 
Martine would get dinner, and Maxime would have 
time enough to dine and catch his train. 

But Felicite objected, visibly disquieted by this 
visit to Macquart. 

“Oh, no, indeed! If you think I am going down 
there in this frightful weather, you are mistaken. 
It is much simpler to send someone to brine Charles 
to us.” 

Pascal shook his head. Charles was not always 
to be brought back when one wished. He was a 
boy without reason, who sometimes, if the whim 
seized him, would gallop off like an untamed ani- 
mal. And old Mme. Rougon, overruled and furious 
at having been unable to make any preparation, was 
at last obliged to yield, in the necessity in which 
she found herself of leaving the matter to chance, 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


81 


“Well, be it as you wish, then ! Good heavens, 
how unfortunately things have turned out !” 

Martine hurried away to order the landau, and 
before three o’clock had struck the horses were on 
the Nice road, descending the declivity which 
slopes down to the bridge over the Viorne. Then 
they turned to the left, and followed the wooded 
banks of the river for about two miles. After this 
the road entered the gorges of the Seille, a narrow 
pass between two giant walls of rock scorched by 
the ardent rays of the summer sun. Pine trees 
pushed their way through the clefts; clumps of 
trees, scarcely thicker at the roots than tufts of 
grass, fringed the crests and hung over the abyss. 
It was a chaos; a blasted landscape, a mouth of 
hell, with its wild turns, its droppings of blood- 
colored earth sliding down from every cut, its deso- 
late solitude invaded only by the eagles’ flight. 

Felicite did not open her lips; her brain was at 
work, and she seemed completely absorbed in her 
thoughts. The atmosphere was oppressive, the sun 
sent his burning rays from behind a veil of great 
livid clouds. Pascal was almost the only one who 
talked, in his passionate love for this scorched land 
— a love which he endeavored to make his nephew 
share. But it was in vain that He uttered enthusi- 
astic exclamations, in vain that he called his atten- 
tion to the persistence of the olives, the fig trees, 
and the thorn bushes in pushing through the rock; 
the life of the rock itself, that colossal and puissant 
frame of the earth, from which they could almost 


8 2 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


fancy they heard a sound of breathing arise. 
Maxime remained cold, filled with a secret anguish 
in presence of those blocks of savage majesty, 
whose mass seemed to crush him. And he pre- 
ferred to turn his eyes toward his sister, who was 
seated in front of him. He was becoming more and 
more charmed with her she looked so healthy and 
so happy, with her T pretty round head, with its 
straight, well-molded forehead. Now and then 
their glances met, and she gave him an affectionate 
smile which consoled him. 

But the wildness of the gorge was beginning to 
soften, the two walls of rock to grow lower; they 
passed between two peaceful hills, with gentle 
slopes covered with thyme ^nd lavender. It was 
the desert still, there were still bare spaces, green 
or violet hued, from whicft the faintest breeze 
brought a pungent perfume. 

Then abruptly, after a last turn they descended 
to the valley of the Tulettes, which was refreshed 
by springs. In the distance stretched meadows 
dotted by large trees. The village was seated mid- 
way on the slope, among olive trees, and the 
country house of Uncle Macquart stood a little apart 
on the left, full in view. The landau turned into 
the road which led to the insane asylum, whose 
white walls they could see before them in the 
distance. 

Felicite s silence had grown somber, for she was 
not fond of exhibiting Uncle Macquart. Another 
whom the family would be well rid of the day 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


*3 

when he should take his departure! For the credit 
of everyone he ought to have been sleeping long 
ago under the sod. But he persisted in living, he 
carried his eighty-three years well, like an old 
drunkard saturated with liquor, whom the alcohol 
seemed to preserve. At Plassans he had left a ter- 
rible reputation as a do-nothing and a scoundrel, 
and the old men whispered the execrable story of 
the corpses that lay between him and the Rougons, 
an act of treachery in the troublous days of Decem- 
ber, 1851, an ambuscade in which he had left com- 
rades with their bellies ripped open, lying on the 
bloody pavement. Later, when he had returned to 
France, he had preferred to the good place of which 
he had obtained the promise this little domain of 
the Tulettes, which F£licite had bought for him. 
And he had lived comfortably here ever since ; he had 
no longer any other ambition than that of enlarging 
it, looking out once more for the good chances, and 
he had even found the means of obtaining a field 
which he had long coveted, by making himself use- 
ful to his sister-in-law at the time when the latter 
again reconquered Plassans fiom the legitimists — 
another frightful story that was whispered also, 
of a madman secretly let loose from the asylum, 
running in the night to avenge himself, setting 
fire to his house in which four persons were 
burned. But these were old stories and Macquart, 
settled down now, was no longer the redoubtable 
scoundrel who had made all the family tremble. 
He led a perfectly correct life; he was a wily diplo- 


8 4 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


mat, and he had retained nothing of his air of jeer 
ing at the world but his bantering smile. 

“Uncle is at home,” said Pascal, as they ap* 
proached the house. 

This was one of those Provencal structures of a 
single story, with discolored tiles and four walls 
washed with a bright yellow. Before the fagade 
extended a narrow terrace shaded by ancient mul- 
berry trees, whose thick, gnarled branches drooped 
down, forming an arbor. It was here that Uncle 
Macquart smoked his pipe in the cool shade, in 
summer. And on hearing the sound of the car- 
riage, he came and stood at the edge of the terrace, 
straightening his tall form neatly clad in blue cloth, 
his head covered with the eternal fur cap which he 
wore from one year’s end to the other. 

As soon as he recognized his visitors, he called 
out with a sneer: 

“Oh, here come some fine company! How kind 
of you ; you are out for an airing.” 

But the presence of Maxime puzzled him. Who 
was he? Whom had he come to see? They men- 
tioned his name to him, and he immediately cut 
short the explanations they were adding, to enable 
him to straighten out the tangled skein of relationship. 

“The father of Charles— I know, I know! The 
son of my nephew Saccard, pardi ! the one who 
made a fine marriage, and whose wife died- ” 

He stared at Maxime, seeming happy to find him 
already wrinkled at thirty-two, with his hair and 
beard sprinkled with snow. 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


*5 

“Ah, well!” he added, “ we are all growing old. 
But I, at least, have no great reason to complain. 
I am solid.” 

And he planted himself firmly on his legs with 
his air of ferocious mockery, while his fiery red face 
seemed to flame and burn. For a long time past 
ordinary brandy had seemed to him like pure water; 
only spirits of 36 degrees tickled his blunted palate ; 
and he took such draughts of it that he was full of 
it — his flesh saturated with it — like a sponge. He 
perspired alcohol. At the slightest breath, when- 
ever he spoke, he exhaled from his mouth a vapor 
of alcohol. 

“Yes, truly; you are solid, uncle!” said Pascal, 
amazed. “And you have done nothing to make 
you so; you have good reason to ridicule us. 
Only there is one thing I am afraid of, look you, 
that some day in lighting your pipe, you may set 
yourself on fire — like a bowl of punch.” 

Macquart, flattered, gave a sneering laugh. 

“Have your jest, have your jest, my boy! A 
glass of cognac is worth more than all your filthy 
drugs. And you will all touch glasses with me, 
hey? So that it may be said truly that your uncle 
is a credit to you all. As for me, I laugh at evil 
tongues. I have corn and olive trees, I have 
almond trees and vines and land, like any 
bourgeois. In summer I smoke my pipe under the 
shade of my mulberry trees; in winter I go to 
smoke it against my wall, there in the sunshine. 
One has no need to blush for an uncle like that, 


86 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


hey? Clotilde, I have syrup, if you would like 
some. And you, Felicite, my dear, I know that 
you prefer anisette. There is everything here, I tell 
you, there is everything here!” 

He waved his arm as if to take possession of the 
comforts he enjoyed, now that from an old sinner 
he had become a hermit, while Felicite, whom he 
had disturbed a moment before by the enumeration 
of his riches, did not take her eyes from his face, 
waiting to interrupt him. 

“Thank you, Macquart, we will take nothing; we 
are in a hurry. Where is Charles?” 

“Charles? Very good, presently! I understand, 
papa has come to see his boy. But that is not 
going to prevent you taking a glass.” 

And as they positively refused he became of- 
fended, and said, with his malicious laugh : 

“Charles is not here; he is at the asylum with 
the old woman.” 

Then, taking Maxime to the end of the terrace, 
he pointed out to him the great white buildings, 
whose inner gardens resembled prison yards. 

“ Look, nephew, you see those three trees in front 
of you. Well, beyond the one to the left, there is 
a fountain in a court. Follow the ground floor, 
and the fifth window to the right is Aunt Dide’s. 
And that is where the boy is. Yes, I took him 
there a little while ago.” 

This was an indulgence of the directors. In the 
twenty years that she had been in the asylum the 
old woman had not given a moment’s uneasiness to 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


*7 

her keeper. Very quiet, very gentle, she passed 
the days motionless in her easy-chair, looking 
straight before her; and as the boy liked to be 
with her, and as she herself seemed to take an 
interest in him, they shut their eyes to this infrac- 
tion of the rules and left him there sometimes for 
two or three hours at a time, busily occupied in 
cutting out pictures. 

But this new disappointment put the finishing 
stroke to Felicite’s ill-humor; she grew angry when 
Macquart proposed that all five should go in a body 
in search of the boy. 

“What an idea! Go you alone, and comeback 
quickly. We have no time to lose.” 

Her suppressed rage seemed to amuse Uncle 
Macquart, and perceiving how disagreeable his 
proposition was to her, he insisted, with his sneer- 
ing laugh : 

“But, my children, we should at the same time 
have an opportunity of seeing the old mother; the 
mother of us all. There is no use in talking; you 
know that we are all descended from her, and it 
would hardly be polite not to go wish her a good- 
day, when my grandnephew, who has come from 
such a distance, has perhaps never before had a 
good look at her. I’ll not disown her, may the 
devil take me if I do. To be sure she is mad, but 
all the same, old mothers who have passed their 
hundredth year are not often to be seen, and she 
well deserves that we should show ourselves a little 
kind to her.” 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


88 


There was silence for a moment. A little shiver 
had run through everyone. And it was Clotilde, 
silent until now, who first declared in a voice full of 
feeling : 

“You are right, uncle; we will all go.” 

Felicite herself was obliged to consent. They 
re-entered the landau, Macquart taking the seat 
beside the coachman. A feeling of disquietude had 
given a sallow look to Maxime’s worn face ; and 
during the short drive he questioned Pascal con- 
cerning Charles with an air of paternal interest, 
which concealed a growing anxiety. The doctor, 
constrained by his mother’s imperious glances, 
softened the truth. Well, the boy’s health was 
certainly not very robust; it was on that account, 
indeed, that they were glad to leave him for weeks i 
together in the country with his uncle ; but he had 
no definite disease. Pascal did not add that he had 
for a moment cherished the dream of giving him a 
brain and muscles by treating him with his hypo- 
dermic injections of nerve substance, but that he 
had always been met by the same difficulty ; the 
slightest puncture brought on a hemorrhage which 
it was found necessary to stop by compresses; 
there was a laxness of the tissues, due to degen- 
eracy ; a bloody dew which exuded from the skin ; 
he had, especially, bleedings at the nose so sudden 
and so violent that they did not dare to leave him 
alone, fearing lest all the blood in his veins should 
flow out. And the doctor ended by saying that 
although the boy’s intelligence had been sluggish, 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


89 

he still hoped that it would develop in an environ- 
ment of quicker mental activity. 

They arrived at the asylum and Macquart, who 
had been listening to the doctor, descended from 
his seat, saying : 

“He is a gentle little fellow, a very gentle little 
fellow. And then, he is so beautiful — an angel!” 

Maxime, who was still pale, and who shivered in 
spite of the stifling heat, put no more questions. 
He looked at the vast buildings of the asylum, the 
wings of the various quarters separated by gardens, 
the men’s quarters from those of the women, those 
of the harmless insane from those of the violent 
insane. A scrupulous cleanliness reigned every- 
where, a gloomy silence — broken from time to time 
by footsteps and the noise of keys. Old Macquart 
knew all the keepers. Besides, the doors were al- 
ways open to Dr. Pascal, who had been authorized 
to attend certain of the inmates. They followed 
a passage and entered a court; it was here — one 
of the chambers on the ground floor, a room covered 
with a light carpet, furnished with a bed, a press, a 
table, an armchair, and two chairs. The nurse, who 
had orders never to quit her charge, happened just 
now to be absent, and the only occupants of the 
room were the madwoman, sitting rigid in her arm- 
chair at one side of the table, and the boy, sitting 
on a chair on the opposite side, absorbed in cutting 
out his pictures. 

“Go in, go in!” Macquart repeated. “Oh, there 
is no danger, she is very gentle !” 


9 o 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


The grandmother, Adelaide Fouque, whom her 
grandchildren, a whole swarm of descendants, called 
by the pet name of Aunt Dide, did not even turn 
her head at the noise. In her youth hysterical 
troubles had unbalanced her mind. Of an ardent 
and passionate nature and subject to nervous 
attacks, she had yet reached the great age of 
eighty-three when a dreadful grief, a terrible moral 
shock, destroyed her reason. At that time, twenty- 
one years before, her mind had ceased to act ; it had 
become suddenly weakened, without the possibility 
of recovery. And now, at the age of 104 years, she 
lived here as if forgotten by the world, a quiet mad- 
woman with an ossified brain, with whom insanity 
might remain stationary for an indefinite length of 
time without causing death. Old age had come, 
however, and had gradually atrophied her muscles. 
Her flesh was as if eaten away by age. The skin 
only remained on her bones, so that she had to be 
carried from her chair to her bed, for it had become 
impossible for her to walk or even to move. And 
yet she held herself erect against the back of her 
chair, a yellow, dried-up skeleton— like an ancient 
tree of which the bark only remains — with only her 
eyes still living in her thin, long visage, in which 
the wrinkles had been, so to say, worn away. She 
was looking fixedly at Charles. 

Clotilde approached her a little tremblingly. 

“Aunt Dide, it is we; we have come to see you. 
Don’t you know me, then? Your little girl who 
comes sometimes to kiss you.” 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


91 


But the madwoman did not seem to hear. Her 
eyes remained fixed upon the boy, who was finish- 
ing cutting out a picture — a purple king in a golden 
mantle. 

“Come, mamma,’' said Macquart, “don't pretend 
to be stupid. You may very well look at us. Here 
is a gentleman, a grandson of yours, who has come 
from Paris expressly to see you.’’ 

At this voice Aunt Dide at last turned her head. 
Her clear, expressionless eyes wandered slowly 
from one* to another, then rested again on Charles 
with the same fixed look as before. 

They all shivered, and no one spoke again. 

“Since the terrible shock she received,” explained 
Pascal, in a low voice, “she has been that way; all 
intelligence, all memory seem extinguished in her. 
For the most part she is silent; at times she pours 
forth a flood of stammering and indistinct words. 
She laughs and cries without cause, she is a thing 
that nothing affects. And yet I should not venture 
to say that the darkness of her mind is complete, 
that no memories remain stored up in its depths. 
Ah ! the poor old mother, how I pity her, if the 
light has not yet been finally extinguished. What 
can her thoughts have been for the last twenty-one 
years, if she still remembers?” 

With a gesture he put this dreadful past which 
he knew from him. He saw her again young, a 
tall, pale, slender girl with frightened eyes, a 
widow, after fifteen months of married life with 
Rougon, the clumsy gardener whom she had chosen 


9 2 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


for a husband, throwing herself immediately after- 
ward into the arms of the smuggler Macquart, whom 
she loved with a wolfish love, and whom she did not 
even marry. She had lived thus for fifteen years, 
with her three children, one the child of her mar- 
riage, the other two illegitimate, a capricious and 
tumultuous existence, disappearing for weeks at a 
time, and returning all bruised, her arms black and 
blue. Then Macquart had been killed, shot down 
like a dog by a gendarme ; and the first shock had 
paralyzed her, so that even then she retaihed noth- 
ing living but her water-clear eyes in her livid face; 
and she shut herself up from the world in the hut 
which her lover had left her, leading there for forty 
years the dead existence of a nun, broken by terri- 
ble nervous attacks. But the other shock was to 
finish her, to overthrow her reason, and Pascal 
recalled the atrocious scene, for he had witnessed it 
— a poor child whom the grandmother had taken to 
live with her, her grandson Silv&re, the victim of 
family hatred and strife, whose head another 
gendarme shattered with a pistol shot, at the sup- 
pression of the insurrectionary movement of 1851. 
She was always to be bespattered with blood. 

Felicite, meanwhile, had approached Charles, who 
was so engrossed with his pictures that all these 
people did not disturb him. 

“My darling, this gentleman is your father. 
Kiss him,” she said. 

And then they all occupied themselves with 
Charles. He was very prettily dressed in a jacket 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


93 


and short trousers of black velvet, braided with 
gold cord. Pale as a lily, he resembled in truth one 
of those king’s sons whose pictures he was cutting 
out, with his large, light eyes and his shower of 
fair curls. But what especially struck the attention 
at this moment was his resemblance to Aunt Dide ; 
this resemblance which had overleaped three gener- 
ations, which had passed from this withered cen- 
tenarian’s countenance, from these dead features 
wasted by life, to this delicate child’s face that was 
also as if worn, aged, and wasted, through the wear 
of the race. Fronting each other, the imbecile 
child of a deathlike beauty seemed the last of the 
race of which she, forgotten by the world, was the 
ancestress. 

Maxime bent over to press a kiss on the boy's 
forehead ; and a chill struck to his heart — this very 
beauty disquieted him ; his uneasiness grew in this 
chamber of madness, whence, it seemed to him, 
breathed a secret horror come from the far-off past. 

“How beautiful you are, my pet! Don’t you 
love me a little?” 

Charles looked at him without comprehending, 
and went back to his play. 

But all were chilled. Without the set expression 
of her countenance changing Aunt Dide wept, a 
flood of tears rolled from her living eyes over her 
dead cheeks. Her gaze fixed immovably upon the 
boy, she wept slowly, endlessly. A great thing had 
happened. 

And now an extraordinary emotion took posses- 


94 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


sion of Pascal. He caught Clotilde by the arm and 
pressed it hard, trying to make her understand. 
Before his eyes appeared the whole line, the legiti- 
mate branch and the bastard branch, which had 
sprung from this trunk already vitiated by neurosis. 
Five generations were there present, the Rougons 
and the Macquarts, Adelaide Fouqu6 at the root, 
then the scoundrelly old uncle, then himself, then 
Clotilde and Maxime, and lastly, Charles. Felicity 
occupied the place of her dead husband. There 
was no link wanting; the chain of heredity, logical 
and implacable, was unbroken. And what a world 
was evoked from the depths of the tragic cabin 
which breathed this horror that came from the far- 
off past in such apj ailing shape that everyone, 
notwithstanding the o jpressive heat, shivered. 

“What is it, m; ster?” whispered Clotlide, 
trembling. 

“No, no, nothing!” ''nurmured the doctor. “I 
will tell you later.’* 

Macquart, who alone continued to sneer, scolded 
the old mother. What in idea was hers, to receive 
people with tears when they put themselves out to 
come and make her a vis 't. It was scarcely polite. 
And then he turned to Maxime and Charles. 

“Well, nephew, you have seen your boy at last. 
Is it not true that he is pretty, and that he is a 
credit to you, after all?” 

F£licite hastened to interfere. Greatly dissatis- 
fied with the turn which affairs were taking, she was 
now anxious only to get away. 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


95 


“He is certainly a handsome boy, and less back- 
ward than people think. Just see how skillful he is 
with his hands. And you will see when you have 
brightened him up in Paris, in a different way from 
what we have been able to do at Plassans, eh?” 

“No doubt,” murmured Maxime. “I do not say 
no; I will think about it.” 

He seemed embarrassed for a moment, and then 
added : 

“You know I came only to see him. I cannot 
take him with me now as I am to spend a month 
at St. Gervais. But as soon as I return to Paris I 
will think of it, I will write to you.” 

Then, taking out his watch, he cried : 

“The devil! Half-past five. You know that I 
would not miss the nine o’clock train for anything 
in the world.” 

“Yes, yes, let us go,” said Felicite brusquely. 
“We have nothing more to do here.” 

Macquart, whom his sister-in-law’s anger seemed 
still to divert, endeavored to delay them with all 
sorts of stories. He told of the days when Aunt 
Dide talked, and he affirmed that he had found her 
one morning singing a romance of her youth. And 
then he had no need of the carriage, he would 
take the boy back on foot, since they left him to 
him. 

“Kiss your papa, my boy, for you know now that 
you see him, but you don’t know whether you shall 
ever see him again or not.” 

With the same surprised and indifferent move- 


9 6 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


ment Charles raised his head, and Maxime, trou- 
bled, pressed another kiss on his forehead. 

“Be very good and very pretty, my pet. And 
love me a little.” 

“Come, come, we have no time to lose,” repeated 
Felicite. 

But the keeper here re-entered the room. She 
was a stout, vigorous girl, attached especially 
to the service of the madwoman. She carried her 
to and from her bed, night and morning; she fed 
her and took care of her like a child. And she at 
once entered into conversation with Dr. Pascal, who 
questioned her. One of the doctor’s most cher- 
ished dreams was to cure the mad by his treatment 
of hypodermic injections. Since in their case it 
was the brain that was in danger, why should not 
hypodermic injections of nerve substance give them 
strength and will, repairing the breaches made in 
the organ? So that for a moment he had dreamed 
of trying the treatment with the old mother; then 
he began to have scruples, he felt a sort of awe, 
without counting that madness at that age was 
total, irreparable ruin. So that he had chosen 
another subject — a hatter named Sarteur, who had 
been for a year past in the asylum, to which he had 
come himself to beg them to shut him up to 
prevent him from committing a crime. In his 
paroxysms, so strong an impulse to kill seized him 
that he would have thrown himself upon the first 
passer-by. He was of small stature, very dark, 
with a retreating forehead, an aquiline face with 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


97 


a large nose and a very short chin, and his left 
cheek was noticeably larger than his right. And 
the doctor had obtained miraculous results with 
this victim of emotional insanity, who for a month 
past had had no attack. The nurse, indeed, being 
questioned, answered that Sarteur had become 
quiet and was growing better every day. 

“Do you hear, Clotilde?” cried Pascal, enchanted. 
“I have not the time to see him this evening, but I 
will come again to-morrow. It is my visiting day. 
Ah, if I only dared; if she were young still ” 

His eyes turned toward Aunt Dide. But Clotilde, 
whom his enthusiasm made smile, said gently: 

“No, no, master, you cannot make life anew. 
There, come. We are the last.” 

It was true; the others had already gone. 
Macquart, on the threshold, followed Felicite and 
Maxime with his mocking glance as they went 
away. Aunt Dide, the forgotten one, sat motion- 
less, appalling in her leanness, her eyes again fixed 
upon Charles with his white, worn face framed in 
his royal locks. 

The drive back was full of constraint. In the 
heat which exhaled from the earth, the landau 
rolled on heavily to the measured trot of the horses. 
The stormy sky took on an ashen, copper-colored 
hue in the deepening twilight. At first a few in- 
different words were exchanged; but from the 
moment in which they entered the gorges of 
the Seille all conversation ceased, as if they felt 
oppressed by the menacing walls of giant rock that 


9 8 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


seemed closing in upon them. Was not this the 
end of the earth, and were they not going to roll 
into the unknown, over the edge of some abyss? 
An eagle soared by, uttering a shrill cry. 

Willows appeared again, and the carriage was 
rolling lightly along the bank of the Viorne, when 
Felicite began without transition, as if she were 
resuming a conversation already commenced. 

“You have no refusal to fear from the mother. 
She loves Charles dearly, but she is a very sensible 
woman, and she understands perfectly that it is to 
the boy's advantage that you should take him with 
you. And I must tell you, too, that the poor boy 
is not very happy with her, since, naturally, the hus- 
band prefers his own son and daughter. For you 
ought to know everything.” 

And she went on in this strain, hoping, no doubt, 
to persuade Maxime and draw a formal promise 
from him. She talked until they reached Plassans. 
Then, suddenly, as the landau rolled over the pave- 
ment of the faubourg, she said : 

“But look! there is his mother. That stout 
blonde at the door there.” 

At the threshold of a harness-maker’s shop hung 
round with horse trappings and halters, Justine sat, 
knitting a stocking, taking the air, while the little 
girl and boy were playing on the ground at her feet. 
And behind them in the shadow of the shop was 
to be seen Thomas, a stout, dark man, occupied in 
repairing a saddle. 

Maxime leaned forward without emotion, simply 


DOCTOR PASCAL . 


99 


curious. He was greatly surprised at sight of this 
robust woman of thirty-two, with so sensible and 
so commonplace an air, in whom there was not a 
trace of the wild little girl with whom he had been 
in love when both of the same age were entering 
their seventeenth year. Perhaps a pang shot 
through his heart to see her plump and tranquil 
and blooming, while he was ill and already aged. 

“I should never have recognized her,” he said. 

And the landau, still rolling on, turned into the 
Rue de Rome. Justine had disappeared; this 
vision of the past — a past so different from the pres- 
ent — had sunk into the shadowy twilight, with 
Thomas, the children, and the shop. 

At La Souleiade the table was set ; Martine had 
an eel from the Viorne, a sauted rabbit, and a leg of 
mutton. Seven o’clock was striking, and they had 
plenty of time to dine quietly. 

“Don’t be uneasy,” said Dr. Pascal to his 
nephew. “We will accompany you to the station ; 
it is not ten minutes’ walk from here. As you left 
your trunk, you have nothing to do but to get your 
ticket and jump on board the train.” 

Then, meeting Clotilde in the vestibule, where 
she was hanging up her hat and her umbrella, he 
said to her in an undertone: 

“Do you know that I am uneasy about your 
brother?” 

“Why so?” 

“I have observed him attentively. I don’t like 
the way in which he walks ; and have you noticed 


IOO 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


what an anxious look he has at times? That has 
never deceived me. In short, your brother is 
threatened with ataxia.” 

“Ataxia!” she repeated, turning very pale. 

A cruel image rose before her, that of a neighbor, 
a man still young, whom for the past ten years she 
had seen driven about in a little carriage by a serv- 
ant. Was not this infirmity the worst of all ills, the 
ax stroke that separates a living being from social 
and active life? 

“But,” she murmured, “he complains only of 
rheumatism.” 

Pascal shrugged his shoulders; and putting a 
finger to his lip he went into the dining room, 
where F£licite and Maxime were seated. 

The dinner was very friendly. The sudden dis- 
quietude which had sprung up in Clotilde’s heart 
made her still more affectionate to her brother, who 
sat beside her. She attended to his wants gayly, 
forcing him to take the most delicate morsels. 
Twice she called back Martine, who was passing 
the dishes too quickly. And Maxime was more and 
more enchanted by this sister, who was so good, 
so healthy, so sensible, whose charm enveloped him 
like a caress. So greatly was he captivated by her 
that gradually a project, vague at first, took 
definite shape within him. Since little Charles, his 
son, terrified him so greatly with his deathlike 
beauty, his royal air of sickly imbecility, why 
should he not take his sister Clotilde to live with 
him? The idea of having a woman in his house 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


101 


alarmed him, indeed, for he was afraid of all 
women, having had too much experience of them 
in his youth; but this one seemed to him truly 
maternal. And then, too, a good woman in his 
house would make a change in it, which would be a 
desirable thing. He would at least be left no 
longer at the mercy of his father, whom he sus- 
pected of desiring his death so that he might get 
possession of his money at once. His hatred and 
terror of his father decided him. 

“Don’t you think of marrying, then?” he asked, 
wishing to try the ground. 

The young girl laughed. 

“Oh, there is no hurry,” she answered. 

Then, suddenly, looking at Pascal, who had raised 
his head, she added : 

“How can I tell? Oh, I shall never marry.” 

But Felicity protested. When she saw her so 
attached to- the doctor, she often wished for a mar- 
riage that would separate her from him, that would 
leave her son alone in a deserted home, where she 
herself might become all-powerful, mistress of 
everythirig. Therefore she appealed to him. Was 
it not true that a woman ought to marry, that it 
was against nature to remain an old maid? 

And he gravely assented, without taking his eyes 
from Clotilde’s face. 

“Yes, yes, she must marry. She is too sensible 
not to marry.” 

“Bah !” interrupted Maxime, “would it be really 
sensible in her to marry? In order to be un- 


102 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


happy, perhaps ; there are so many ill-assorted 
marriages !” 

And coming to a resolution, he added : 

“Don’t you know what you ought to do? Well, 
you ought to come and live with me in Paris. I 
have thought the matter over. The idea of taking 
charge of a child in my state of health terrifies me. 
Am I not a child myself, an invalid who needs to 
be taken care of? You will take care of me; you 
will be with me, if I should end by losing the use of 
my limbs.” 

There was a sound of tears in his voice, so great 
a pity did he feel for himself. He saw himself, in 
fancy, sick; he saw his sister at his bedside, like a 
Sister of Charity; if she consented to remain un- 
married he would willingly leave her his fortune, so 
that his father might not have it. The dread which 
he had of solitude, the need in which he should 
perhaps stand of having a sick-nurse,- made him 
very pathetic. 

“It would be very kind on your part, and you 
should have no cause to repent it.” 

Martine, who was helping the mutton, stopped 
short in surprise; and the proposition caused the 
same surprise at the table. Felicite was the first to 
approve, feeling that the girl’s departure would 
further her plans. She looked at Clotilde, who was 
still silent and stunned, as it were; while Dr. Pascal 
waited with a pale face. 

“Oh, brother, brother,” stammered the young 
girl, unable at first to think of anything else to say. 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


103 

Then her grandmother cried : 

“Is that all you have to say? Why, the propo- 
sition your brother has just made you is a very 
advantageous one. If he is afraid of taking Charles 
now, why, you can go with him, and later on you 
can send for the child. Come, come, that can be 
very well arranged Your brother makes an appeal 
to your heart. Is it not true, Pascal, that she owes 
him a favorable answer?” 

The doctor, by an effort, recovered his self- 
possession. The chill that had seized him made 
itself felt, however, in the slowness with which he 
spoke. 

“The offer, in effect, is very kind. Clotilde, as I 
said before, is very sensible and she will accept it, 
if it is right that she should do so.” 

The young girl, greatly agitated, rebelled at this. 

“Do you wish to send me away, then, master? 
Maxime is very good, and I thank him from the 
bottom of my heart. But to leave everything, my 
God ! To leave all that love me, all that I have 
loved until now !” 

She made a despairing gesture, indicating the 
place and the people, taking in all La Souleiade. 

“But,” responded Pascal, looking at her fixedly, 
“what if Maxime should need you, what if you had 
a duty to fulfill toward him?” 

Her eyes grew moist, and she remained for a 
moment trembling and desperate; for she alone 
understood. The cruel vision again arose before 
her — Maxime, helpless, driven about in a little car- 


io4 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


riage by a servant, like the neighbor whom she used 
to pity. Had she indeed any duty toward a brother 
who for fifteen years had been a stranger to her? 
Did not her duty lie where her heart was? Never- 
theless, her distress of mind continued; she still 
suffered in the struggle. 

“Listen, Maxime,” she said at last, “give me also 
time to reflect. I will see. Be assured that I am 
very grateful to you. And if you should one day 
really have need of me, well, I should no doubt 
decide to go.” 

This was all they could make her promise. F£- 
licite, with her usual vehemence, exhausted all her 
efforts in vain, while the doctor now affected to say 
that she had given her word. Martine brought a 
cream, without thinking of hiding her joy. To take 
away mademoiselle ! what an idea, in order that 
monsieur might die of grief at finding himself all 
alone. And the dinner was delayed, too, by this 
unexpected incident. They were still at the dessert 
when half-past eight struck. 

Then Maxime grew restless, tapped the floor with 
his foot, and declared that he must go. 

At the station, whither they all accompanied 
him, he kissed his sister a last time, saying : 

“Remember !” 

“Don’t be afraid,” declared Felicite, “we are here 
to remind her of her promise.” 

The doctor smiled, and all three, as soon as the 
train was in motion, waved their handkerchiefs. 

On this day, after accompanying the grandmother 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


10 5 

to her door, Dr. Pascal and Clotilde returned peace- 
fully to La Souleiade, and spent a delightful even- 
ing there. The constraint of the past few weeks, 
the secret antagonism which had separated them, 
seemed to have vanished. Never had it seemed so 
sweet to them to feel so united, inseparable. 
Doubtless it was only this first pang of uneasiness 
suffered by their affection, this threatened separa- 
tion, the postponement of which delighted them. 
It was for them like a return to health after an 
illness, a new hope of life. They remained for a 
long time in the warm night, under the plane trees, 
listening to the crystal murmur of the fountain. 
And they did not even speak, so profoundly did 
they enjoy the happiness of being together. 


IV. 


Ten days later the household had fallen back into 
its former state of unhappiness. Pascal and Clotilde 
remained entire afternoons without exchanging a 
word; and there were continual outbursts of ill- 
humor. Even Martine was constantly out of tem- 
per. 'JJ'he home of these three had again become a 
hell. 

Thep suddenly the condition of affairs was still 
further aggravated. A Capuchin monk of great 
sanctity, such as often pass through the towns of 
the South, came to Plassans to conduct a mission. 
The pulpit of St. Saturnin resounded with his 
bursts of eloquence. He was a sort of apostle, a 
popular and fiery orator, a florid speaker, much 
given to the use of metaphors. And he preached on 
the nothingness of modern science with an extraor- 
dinary mystical exaltation, denying the reality of 
this world, and disclosing the unknown, the mys- 
teries of the Beyond. All the devout women of the 
town were full of excitement about his preaching. 

On the very first evening on which Clotilde, 
accompanied by Martine, attended the sermon, 
Pascal noticed her feverish excitement when she 
returned. On the following day her excitement 
increased, and she returned home later, having re- 

106 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


107 


mained to pray for an hour in a dark corner of a 
chapel. From this time she was never absent from 
the services, returning languid, and with the lumi- 
nous eyes of a seer; and the Capuchin’s burning 
words haunted her; certain of his images stirred her 
to ecstasy. She grew irritable, and she seemed to 
have conceived a feeling of anger and contempt for 
everyone and everything around her. 

Pascal, filled with uneasiness, determined to have 
an explanation with Martine. He came down early 
one morning as she was sweeping the dining room. 

“You know that I leave you and Clotilde free to 
go to church, if that pleases you,” he said. “I do 
not believe in oppressing anyone’s conscience. But 
I do not wish that you should make her sick.’’ 

The servant, without stopping in her work, said 
in a low voice : 

“Perhaps the sick people are those who don’t 
think that they are sick.” 

She said this with such an air of conviction that 
he smiled. 

“Yes,” he returned; “I am the sick soul whose 
conversion you pray for; while both of you are in 
possession of health and of perfect wisdom. Mar- 
tine, if you continue to torment me and to torment 
yourselves, as you are doing, I shall grow angry.” 

He spoke in so furious and so harsh a voice that 
the servant stopped suddenly in her sweeping, and 
looked him full in the face. An infinite tenderness, 
an immense desolation passed over the face of the 
old maid cloistered in his service. And tears filled 


108 DOCTOR RASCAL. 

her eyes and she hurried out of the room stam- 
mering : 

“Ah, monsieur, you do not love us.” 

Then Pascal, filled with an overwhelming sadness, 
gave up the contest. His remorse increased for 
having shown so much tolerance, for not having 
exercised his authority as master, in directing 
Clotilde’s education and bringing up. In his belief 
that trees grew straight if they were not interfered 
with, he had allowed her to grow up in her own 
way, after teaching her merely to read and write. 
It was without any preconceived plan, while aiding 
him in making his researches and correcting his 
manuscripts, and simply by the force of circum- 
stances, that she had read everything and acquired a 
fondness for the natural sciences. How bitterly he 
now regretted his indifference! What a powerful 
impulse he might have given to this clear mind, so 
eager for knowledge, instead of allowing it to go 
astray, and waste itself in that desire for the Be- 
yond, which Grandmother Felicity and the good 
Martine favored. While he had occupied himself 
with facts, endeavoring to keep from going beyond 
the phenomenon, and succeeding in doing so, 
through his scientific discipline, he had seen her 
give all her thoughts to the unknown, the mysteri- 
ous. It was with her an obsession, an instinctive 
curiosity which amounted to torture when she could 
not satisfy it. There was in her a longing which 
nothing could appease, an irresistible call toward 
the unattainable, the unknowable. Even when she 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


109 


was a child, and still more, later,, when she grew up, 
she went straight to the why and the how of things, 
she demanded ultimate causes. If he showed her 
a flower, she asked why this flower produced a seed, 
why this seed would germinate. Then, it would be 
the mystery of birth and death, and the unknown 
forces, and God, and all things. In half a dozen 
questions she would drive him into a corner, oblig- 
ing him each time to acknowledge his fatal igno- 
rance; and when he no longer knew what to answer 
her, when he would get rid of her with a gesture of 
comic fury, she would give a gay laugh of triumph, 
and go to lose herself again in her dreams, in the 
limitless vision of all that we do not know, and all 
that we may believe. Often she astounded him by 
her explanations. Her mind, nourished on science, 
started from proved truths, but with such an impe- 
tus that she bounded at once straight into the 
heaven of the legends. All sorts of mediators 
passed there, angels and saints and supernatural 
inspirations, modifying matter, endowing it with 
life; or, again, it was only one single force, the soul 
of the world, working to fuse things and beings in a 
final kiss of love in fifty centuries more. She had 
calculated the number of them, she said. 

For the rest, Pascal had never before seen her so 
excited. For the past week, during which she had 
attended the Capuchin’s mission in the cathedral, 
she had spent the days visibly in the expectation of 
the sermon of the evening; and she went to hear it 
with the rapt exaltation of a girl who is going to 


IIO 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


her first rendezvous of love. Then, on the follow- 
ing day, everything about her declared her detach- 
ment from the exterior life, from her accustomed 
existence, as if the visible world, the necessary 
actions of every moment, were but a snare and a 
folly. She retired within herself in the vision of 
what was not. Thus she had almost completely 
given up her habitual occupations, abandoning her- 
self to a sort of unconquerable indolence, remaining 
for hours at a time with her hands in her lap, her gaze 
lost in vacancy, rapt in the contemplation of some 
far-off vision. Now she, who had been so active, so 
early a riser, rose late, appearing barely in time for 
the second breakfast, and it could not have been at 
her toilet that she spent these long hours, for she 
forgot her feminine coquetry, and would come down 
with her hair scarcely combed, negligently attired 
in a gown buttoned awry, but even thus adorable, 
thanks to her triumphant youth. The morning 
walks through La Souleiade that she had been so 
fond of, the races from the top to the bottom of the 
terraces planted with olive and almond trees, the 
visits to the pine grove balmy with the odor of 
resin, the long sun baths in the hot threshing yard, 
she indulged in no more; she preferred to remain 
shut up in her darkened room, from which not a 
movement was to be heard. Then, in the afternoon, 
in the work room, she would drag herself about 
languidly from chair to chair, doing nothing, tired 
and disgusted with everything that had formerly 
interested her. 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


1 1 1 

Pascal was obliged to renounce her assistance ; a 
paper which he gave her to copy remained three 
days untouched on her desk. She no longer classi- 
fied anything; she would not have stooped down to 
pick up a paper from the floor. More than all, 
she abandoned the pastels, copies of flowers from 
nature that she had been making, to serve as plates 
to a work on artificial fecundations. Some large 
red mallows, of a new and singular coloring, faded 
in their vase before she had finished copying them. 
And yet for a whole afternoon she worked enthusi- 
astically at a fantastic design of dream flowers, an 
extraordinary efflorescence blooming in the light of 
a miraculous sun, a burst of golden spike-shaped 
rays in the center of large purple corollas, resem- 
bling open hearts, whence shot, for pistils, a shower 
of stars, myriads of worlds streaming into the sky, 
like a milky way. 

“Ah, my poor girl,” said the doctor to her on this 
day, “how can you lose your time in such conceits! 
And I waiting for the copy of those mallows that 
you have left to die there. And you will make 
yourself ill. There is no health, nor beauty, even, 
possible outside reality.” 

Often now she did not answer, intrenching herself 
behind her fierce convictions, not wishing to dispute. 
But doubtless he had this time touched her beliefs 
to the quick. 

“There is no reality,” she answered sharply. 

The doctor, amused by this bold philosophy from 
this big child, laughed. 


1 1 2 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


“Yes, I know,” lie said; “our senses &re fallible. 
We know this world only through our senses, conse- 
quently it is possible that the world does not exist. 
Let us open the door to madness, then; let us 
accept as possible the most absurd chimeras, let us 
live in the realm of nightmare, outside of laws and 
facts. For do you not see that there is no longer 
any law if you suppress nature, and that the only 
thing that gives life any interest is to believe in life, 
to love it, and to put all the forces of our intelli- 
gence to the better understanding of it?” 

She made a gesture of mingled indifference and 
bravado, and the conversation dropped. Now she 
was laying large strokes of blue crayon on the 
pastel, bringing out its flaming splendor in strong 
relief on the background of a clear summer night. 

But two day later, in consequence of a fresh 
discussion, matters went still further amiss. In the 
evening, on leaving the table, Pascal went up to the 
study to write, while she remained out of doors, 
sitting on the terrace. Hours passed by, and he 
was surprised and uneasy, when midnight struck, 
that he had not yet heard her return to her room. 
She would have had to pass through the study, and 
he was very certain that she had not passed unno- 
ticed by him. Going downstairs, he found that 
Martine was asleep; the vestibule door was not 
locked, and Clotilde must have remained outside, 
oblivious of the flight of time. This often hap- 
pened to her on these warm nights, but she had 
never before remained out so late. 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


113 

The doctor’s uneasiness increased when he per- 
ceived on the terrace the chair, now vacant, in which 
the young girl had been sitting. He had expected 
to find her asleep in it. Since she was not there, why 
had she not come in. Where could she have gone at 
such an hour? The night was beautiful: a Septem- 
ber night, still warm, with a wide sky whose dark, 
velvety expanse was studded with stars; and from 
the depths of this moonless sky the stars shone so 
large and bright that they lighted the earth with a 
pale, mysterious radiance. He leaned over the 
balustrade of the terrace, and examined the slope 
and the stone steps which led down to the railroad ; 
but there was not a movement. He saw nothing but 
the round motionless tops of the little olive trees. 
The idea then occurred to him that she must cer- 
tainly be under the plane trees beside the fountain, 
whose murmuring waters made perpetual coolness 
around. He hurried there, and found himself 
enveloped in such thick darkness that he, who knew 
every tree, was obliged to walk with outstretched 
hands to avoid stumbling. Then he groped his way 
through the dark pine grove, still without meeting 
anyone. And at last he called in a muffled voice: 

“Clotilde! Clotilde!” 

The darkness remained silent and impenetrable. 

“Clotilde! Clotilde!” he cried again, in a louder 
voice. Not a sound, not a breath. The very 
echoes seemed asleep. His cry was drowned in the 
infinitely soft lake of blue shadows. And then he 
called her with all the force of his lungs. H^ returned 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


1 14 

to the plane trees. He went back to the pine grove, 
beside himself with fright, scouring the entire do- 
main. Then, suddenly, he found himself in the 
threshing yard. 

At this cool and tranquil hour, the immense yard, 
the vast circular paved court, slept too. It was so 
many years since grain had been threshed here that 
grass had sprung up among the stones, quickly 
scorched a russet brown by the sun, resembling the 
long threads of a woolen carpet. And, under the 
tufts of this feeble vegetation, the ancient pavement 
did not cool during the whole summer, smoking 
from sunset, exhaling in the night the heat stored 
up from so many sultry noons. 

The yard stretched around, bare and deserted, 
in the cooling atmosphere, under the infinite 
calm of the sky, and Pascal was crossing it to hurry 
to the orchard, when he almost fell over a form 
that he had not before observed, extended at full 
length upon the ground. He uttered a frightened 
cry. 

“What! Are you here?” 

Clotilde did not deign even to answer. She was 
lying on her back, her hands clasped under the back 
of her neck, her face turned toward the sky ; and in 
her pale countenance, only her large shining eyes 
were visible. 

“And here I have been tormenting myself and 
calling you for an hour past! Did you not hear 
me shouting?” 

She at last unclosed her lips. 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


“Then that is very senseless ! Why did you not 
answer me?” 

But she fell back into her former silence, refusing 
all explanation, and with a stubborn brow kept her 
gaze fixed steadily on the sky. 

‘‘There, come in and go to bed, naughty child. 
You will tell me to-morrow.” 

She did not stir, however; he begged her ten 
times over to go into the house, but she would not 
move. He ended by sitting down beside her on the 
short grass, through which penetrated the warmth 
of the pavement beneath. 

“But you cannot sleep out of doors. At least 
answer mq. What are you doing here?” 

“I am looking.” 

And from her large eyes, fixed and motionless, 
her gaze seemed to mount up among the stars. 
She seemed wholly absorbed in the contemplation 
of the pure starry depths of the summer sky. 

“Ah, master!” she continued, in a low monotone; 
“how narrow and limited is all that you know com- 
pared to what there is surely up there. Yes, if I 
did not answer you it was because I was thinking 
of you, and I was filled with grief. You must not 
think me bad.” 

In her voice there was a thrill of such tenderness 
that it moved him profoundly. He stretched him- 
self on the grass beside her, so that their elbows 
touched, and they went on talking. 

“I greatly fear, my dear, that your griefs are not 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


1 16 

rational. It gives you pain to think of me. 
Why so?” 

“Oh, because of things that I should find it hard 
to explain to you; I am not a savante. You have 
taught me much, however, and I have learned more 
myself, being with you. Besides, they are things 
that I feel. Perhaps I might try to tell them to 
you, as we are all alone here, and the night is so 
beautiful.” 

Her full heart overflowed, after hours of medita- 
tion, in the peaceful confidence of the beautiful 
night. He did not speak, fearing to disturb her, 
but awaited her confidences in silence. 

“When I was a little girl and you used to talk to 
me about science, it seemed to me that you were 
speaking to me of God, your words burned so with 
faith and hope. Nothing seemed impossible to 
you. With science you were going to penetrate 
the secret of the world, and make the perfect happi- 
ness of humanity a reality. According to you, we 
were progressing with giant strides. Each day 
brought its discovery, its certainty. Ten, fifty, a 
hundred years more, perhaps, and the heavens 
would open and we should see truth face to face. 
Well, the years pass, and nothing opens, and truth 
recedes.” 

“You are an impatient girl,” he answered simply. 
“If ten centuries more be necessary we must only 
wait for them to pass.” 

“It is true. I cannot wait. I need to know; I 
need to be happy at once, and to know every- 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


It7 

thing at once, and to be perfectly and forever 
happy. Oh, that is what makes me suffer, not to 
be able to reach at a bound complete knowledge, 
not to. be able to rest in perfect felicity, freed from 
scruples and doubts. Is it living to advance with 
tortoiselike pace in the darkness, not to be able to 
enjoy an hour’s tranquillity, without trembling at 
the thought of the coming anguish? No, no! All 
knowledge and all happiness in a single day! 
Science has promised them to us, and if she does 
not give them to us, then she fails in her engage- 
ments.” 

Then he, too, began to grow heated. 

“But what you are saying is folly, little girl. 
Science is not revelation. It marches at its human 
pace, its very effort is its glory. And then it is not 
true that science has promised happiness.” 

She interrupted him hastily. 

“How, not true! Open your books up there, 
then. You know that I have read them. Do they 
not overflow with promises? To read them one 
would think we were marching on to the conquest 
of earth and heaven. They demolish everything, 
and they swear to replace everything — and that by 
pure reason, with stability and wisdom. Doubtless 
I am like the children. When I am promised any- 
thing I wish that it shall be given to me at once. 
My imagination sets to work, and the object must 
be very beautiful to satisfy me. But it would have 
been easy not to have promised anything. And 
above all, at this hour, in view of my eager and 


1 18 


DOCTOR RASCAL . 


painful longing, it would be very ill done to tell me 
that nothing has been promised me.” 

He made a gesture, a simple gesture of protesta- 
tion and impatience, in the serene and silent night. 

“In any case,” she continued, “science has swept 
away all our past beliefs. The earth is bare, the 
heavens are empty, and what do you wish that 1 
should become, even if you acquit science of having 
inspired the hopes I have conceived? For I cannot 
live without belief and without happiness. On 
what solid ground shall I build my house when 
science shall have demolished the old world, and 
while she is waiting to construct the new? All the 
ancient city has fallen to pieces in this catastrophe 
of examination and analysis; and all that remains 
of it is a mad population vainly seeking a shelter 
among its ruins, while anxiously looking for a solid 
and permanent refuge where they may begin life 
anew. You must not be surprised, then, at our 
discouragement and our impatience. We can wait 
no longer. Since tardy science has failed in her 
promises, we prefer to fall back on the old beliefs, 
which for centuries have sufficed for the happiness 
of the world.” 

“Ah! that is just it,” he responded in a low 
voice; “we are just at the turning point, at the end 
of the century, fatigued and exhausted with the 
appalling accumulation of knowledge which it has 
set moving. And it is the eternal need for false- 
hood, the eternal need for illusion which distracts 
humanity, and throws it back upon the delusive 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


119 


charm of the unknown. Since we can never know 
all, what is the use of trying to know more than we 
know already? Since the truth, when we have 
attained it, does not confer immediate and certain 
happiness, why not be satisfied with ignorance, the 
darkened cradle in which humanity slept the deep 
sleep of infancy? Yes, this is the aggressive return 
of the mysterious, it is the reaction against a cen- 
tury of experimental research. And this had to be; 
desertions were to be expected, since every need 
could not be satisfied at once. But this is only a 
halt ; the onward march will continue, up there, 
beyond our view, in the illimitable fields of sp;:ce.” 

For a moment they remained silent, still motion- 
less on their backs, their gaze lost among the 
myriads of worlds shining in the dark sky. A fall- 
ing star shot across the constellation of Cassiopeia, 
like a flaming arrow. And the luminous universe 
above turned slowly on its axis, in solemn splendor, 
while from the dark earth around them arose only a 
faint breath, like the soft, warm breath of a sleeping 
woman. 

“Tell me,” he said, in his good-natured voice, 
“did your Capuchin turn your head this evening, 
then?” 

“Yes,” she answered frankly; “he says from the 
pulpit things that disturb me. He preaches against 
everything you have taught me, and it is as if the 
knowledge which I owe to you, transformed into a 
poison, were consuming me. My God! What is 
going to become of me?” 


120 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


“My poor child! It is terrible that you should 
torture yourself in this way! And yet I had 
been quite tranquil about you, for you have a well- 
balanced mind — you have a good, little, round, clear, 
solid headpiece, as I have often told you. You will 
soon calm down. But what confusion in the brains 
of others, at this end of the century, if you, who are 
so sane, are troubled! Have you not faith, then?” 

She answered only by a heavy sigh. 

“Assuredly, viewed from the standpoint of happi- 
ness, faith is a strong staff for the traveler to lean 
upon, and the march becomes easy and tranquil 
when one is fortunate enough to possess it.” 

“Oh, I no longer know whether I believe or not !” 
she cried. “There are days when I believe, and 
there are other days when I side with you and with 
your books. It is you who have disturbed me; it is 
through you I suffer. And perhaps all my suffering 
springs from this, from my revolt against you whom 
I love. No, no! tell me nothing; do not tell me 
that I shall soon calm down. At this moment that 
would only irritate me still more. I know well that 
you deny the supernatural. The mysterious for 
you is only the inexplicable. Even you concede 
that we shall never know all ; and therefore you 
consider that the only interest life can have is the 
continual conquest over the unknown, the eternal 
effort to know more. Ah, I know too much already 
to believe. You have already succeeded but too well 
in shaking my faith, and there are times when it 
seems to me that this will kill me.” 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


121 


He took her hand that lay on the still warm 
grass, and pressed it hard. 

“No, no; it is life that frightens you, little girl. 
And how right you are in saying that happiness 
consists in continual effort. For from this time 
forward tranquil ignorance is impossible. There is 
no halt to be looked for, no tranquillity in renuncia- 
tion and willful blindness. We must go on, go on 
in any case with life, which goes on always. Every- 
thing that is proposed, a return to the past, to dead 
religions, patched up religions arranged to suit new 
wants, is a snare. Learn to know life, then ; to love 
it, live it as it ought to be lived — that is the only 
wisdom.” 

But she shook off his hand angrily. And her 
voice trembled with vexation. 

“Life is horrible. How do you wish me to live it 
tranquil and happy? It is a terrible light that your 
science throws upon the world. Your analysis opens 
up all the wounds of humanity to display their hor- 
ror. You tell everything; you speak too plainly; 
you leave us nothing but disgust for people and for 
things, without any possible consolation.” 

He interrupted her with a cry of ardent con- 
viction. 

“We tell everything. Ah, yes; in order to know 
everything and to remedy everything!” 

Her anger rose, and she sat erect. 

“If even equality and justice existed in your 
nature — but you acknowledge it yourself, life is 
for the strongest, the weak infallibly perishes 


122 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


because he is weak — there are no two beings 
equal, either in health, in beauty, or in intelligence; 
everything is left to haphazard meeting, to the 
chance of selection. And everything falls into ruin, 
when grand and sacred justice ceases to exist.” 

“It is true,” he said, in an undertone, as if speak- 
ing to himself, “there is no such thing as equality. 
No society based upon it could continue to exist. 
For centuries, men thought to remedy evil by char- 
ity. But that idea is being exploded, and now 
they propose justice. Is Nature just? I think her 
logical, rather. Logic is perhaps a natural and 
higher justice, going straight to the sum of the com- 
mon labor, to the grand final labor.” 

“Then it is justice,” she cried, “that crushes the 
individual for the happiness of the race, that de- 
stroys an enfeebled species to fatten the victorious 
species. No, no ; that is crime. There is in that 
only foulness and murder. He was right this even- 
ing in the church. The earth is corrupt, science only 
serves to show its rottenness. It is on high that we 
must all seek a refuge. Oh, master, I entreat you, 
let me save myself, let me save you !” 

She burst into tears, and the sound of her sobs 
rose despairingly on the stillness of the night. He 
tried in vain to soothe her, her voice dominated 
his. 

“Listen to me, master. You know that I love you, 
for you are everything to me. And it is you who 
are the cause of all my suffering. I can scarcely 
endure it when I think that we are not in accord, 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


123 


that we should be separated forever if we were both 
to die to-morrow. Why will you not believe?” 

He still tried to reason with her. 

“Come, don’t be foolish, my dear ” 

But she threw herself on her knees, she seized 
him by the hands, she clung to him with a feverish 
force. And she sobbed louder and louder, in such a 
clamor of despair that the dark fields afar off were 
startled by it. 

“Listen to me, he said it in the church. You 
must change your life and do penance; you must 
burn everything belonging to your past errors — 
your books, your papers, your manuscripts. Make 
this sacrifice, master, I entreat it of you on my 
knees. And you will see the delightful existence 
we shall lead together.” 

At last he rebelled. 

“No, this is too much. Be silent!” 

“If you listen to me, master, you will do what I 
wish. I assure you that I am horribly unhappy, 
even in loving you as I love you. There is some- 
thing wanting in our affection. So far it has been 
profound but unavailing, and I have an irresistible 
longing to fill it, oh, with all that is divine and 
eternal. What can be wanting to us but God? 
Kneel down and pray with me !” 

With an abrupt movement he released himself, 
angry in his turn. 

“Be silent; you are talking nonsense. I have left 
you free, leave me free.” 

“Master, master! it is our happiness that I desire! 


124 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


I will take you far, far away. We will go to some 
solitude to live there in God !” 

“Be silent! No, never!” 

Then they remained for a moment confronting 
each other, mute and menacing. Around them 
stretched La Souleiade in the deep silence of the 
night, with the light shadows of its olive trees, the 
darkness of its pine and plane trees, in which the 
saddened voice of the fountain was singing, and 
above their heads it seemed as if the spacious sky, 
studded with stars, shuddered and grew pale, 
although the dawn was still far off. 

Clotilde raised her arm as if to point to this infi- 
nite, shuddering sky ; but with a quick gesture Pascal 
seized her hand and drew it down toward the earth 
in his. And no word further was spoken ; they 
were beside themselves with rage and hate. The 
quarrel was fierce and bitter. 

She drew her hand away abruptly, and sprang 
backward, like some proud, untamable animal, rear- 
ing; then she rushed swiftly through the darkness 
toward the house. He heard the patter of her 
little boots on the stones of the yard, deadened 
afterward by the sand of the walk. He, on his side, 
already grieved and uneasy, called her back in 
urgent tones. But she ran on without answering, 
without hearing. Alarmed, and with a heavy heart, 
he hurried after her, and rounded the clump of 
plane trees just in time to see her rush into the 
house like a whirlwind. He darted in after her, ran 
up the stairs, and struck against the door of her 


DOCTOR PASCAL . 


I2 5 


room, which she violently bolted. And here he 
stopped and grew calm, by a strong effort resisting 
the desire to cry out, to call her again, to break in 
the door so as to see her once more, to convince 
her, to have her all to himself. For a moment he 
remained motionless, chilled by the deathlike silence 
of the room, from which not the faintest sound 
issued. Doubtless she had thrown herself on the 
bed, and was stifling her cries and her sobs in the 
pillow. He determined at last to go downstairs 
again and close the hall door, and then he returned 
softly and listened, waiting for some sound of 
moaning. And day was breaking when he went dis- 
consolately to bed, choking back his tears. 

Thenceforward it was war without mercy. Pascal 
felt himself spied upon, trapped, menaced. He was 
no longer master of his house ; he had no longer any 
home. The enemy was always there, forcing him to 
be constantly on his guard, to lock up everything. 
One after the other, two vials of nerve-substance 
which he had compounded were found in fragments, 
and he was obliged to barricade himself in his room, 
where he could be heard pounding for days to- 
gether, without showing himself even at mealtimes. 
He no longer took Clotilde with him on his visiting 
days, because she discouraged his patients by her 
attitude of aggressive incredulity. But from the 
moment he left the house, the doctor had only one 
desire — to return to it quickly, for he trembled lest 
he should find his locks forced, and his drawers 
rifled on his return. He no longer employed the 


1 26 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


young girl to classify and copy his notes, for several 
of them had disappeared, as if they had been carried 
away by the wind. He did not even venture to 
employ her to correct his proofs, having ascertained 
that she had cut out of an article an entire passage 
the sentiment of which offended her Catholic belief. 
And thus she remained idle, prowling about the 
rooms, and having abundance of time to watch for 
an occasion which would put in her possession the 
key of the large press. This was her dream, the 
plan which she revolved in her mind during her 
long silences, while her eyes shone and her hands 
burned with fever — to have the key, to open the 
press, to take and burn everything in an auto da ft 
which would be pleasing to God. A few pages of 
manuscript, forgotten by him on a corner of the 
table, while he went to wash his hands and put on 
his coat, had disappeared, leaving behind only a 
little heap of ashes in the fireplace. He could no 
longer leave a scrap of paper about. He carried away 
everything; he hid everything. One evening, when 
he had remained late with a patient, as he was 
returning home in the dusk a wild terror seized him 
at the faubourg, at sight of a thick black smoke 
rising up in clouds that darkened the heavens. 
Was it not La Souleiade that was burning down, 
set on fire by the bonfire made with his papers? 
He ran toward the house, and was reassured only 
on seeing in a neighboring field a fire of roots burn- 
ing slowly. 

But how terrible are the tortures of the scientist 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


*127 

who feels himself menaced in this way in the labors 
of his intellect ! The discoveries which he has 
made, the writings which he has counted upon leav- 
ing behind him, these are his pride, they are crea- 
tures of his blood — his children — and whoever 
destroys, whoever burns them, burns a part of 
himself. Especially, in this perpetual lying in wait 
for the creatures of his brain, was Pascal tortured 
by the thought that the enemy was in his house, 
installed in his very heart, and that he loved her in 
spite of everything, this creature whom he had 
made what she was. He was left disarmed, without 
possible defense; not wishing to act, and having no 
other resource than to watch with vigilance. On all 
sides the investment was closing around him. He 
fancied he felt the little pilfering hands stealing into 
his pockets. He had no longer any tranquillity, even 
with the doors closed, for he feared that he was 
being robbed through the crevices. 

“But, unhappy child,” he cried one day, “I love 
but you in the world, and you are killing me! And 
yet you love me, too; you act in this way because 
you love me, and it is abominable. It would be better 
to have done with it all at once, and throw ourselves 
into the river with a stone tied around our necks.” 

She did not answer, but her dauntless eyes said 
ardently that she would willingly die on the instant, 
if it were with him. 

“And if I should suddenly die to-night, what 
would happen to-morrow? You would empty the 
press, you would empty the drawers, you would 


128 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


make a great heap of all my works and burn them ! 
You would, would you not? Do you know that 
that would be a real murder, as much as if you 
assassinated someone? And what abominable 
cowardice, to kill the thoughts!” 

“No,” she said at last, in a low voice; “to kill evil, 
to prevent it from spreading and springing up 
again !” 

All their explanations only served to kindle anew 
their anger. And they had terrible ones. And one 
evening, when old Mme. Rougon had chanced in on 
one of these quarrels, she remained alone with 
Pascal, after Clotilde had fled to hide herself in her 
room. There was silence for a moment. In spite 
of the heartbroken air which she had assumed, a 
wicked joy shone in the depths of her sparkling 
eyes. 

“But your unhappy house is a hell!” she cried 
at last. 

The doctor avoided an answer by a gesture. He 
had always felt that his mother backed the young 
girl, inflaming her religious faith, utilizing this fer- 
ment of revolt to bring trouble into his house. He 
was not deceived. He knew perfectly well that 
the two women had seen each other during the 
day, and that he owed to this meeting, to a skillful 
embittering of Clotilde’s mind, the frightful scene 
at which he still trembled. Doubtless his mother 
had come to learn what mischief had been wrought, 
and to see if the denouement was not at last at 
hand. 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


129 


“Things cannot go on in this way,” she resumed. 
“Why do you not separate since you can no longer 
agree. You ought to send her to her brother 
Maxime. He wrote to me not long since asking her 
again.” 

He straightened himself, pale and determined. 

“To part angry with each other? Ah, no, no ! 
that would be an eternal remorse, an incurable 
wound. If she must one day go away, I wish that 
we may be able to love each other at a distance. 
But why go away? Neither of us complains of the 
other.” 

Felicite felt that she had been too hasty. There- 
fore she assumed her hypocritical, conciliating air. 

“Of course, if it pleases you both to quarrel, no 
one has anything to say in the matter. Only, my 
poor friend, permit me, in that case, to say that I 
think Clotilde is not altogether in the wrong. You 
force me to confess that I saw her a little while 
ago ; yes, it is better that you should know, not- 
withstanding my promise to be silent. Well, she is 
not happy ; she makes a great many complaints, and 
you may imagine that I scolded her and preached 
complete submission to her. But that does not 
prevent me from being unable to understand you 
myself, and from thinking that you do everything 
you can to make yourself unhappy.” 

She sat down in a corner of the room, and 
obliged him to sit down with her, seeming delighted 
to have him here alone, at her mercy. She had 
already, more than once before, tried to force him 


130 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


to an explanation in this way, but he had always 
avoided it. Although she had tortured him for 
years past, and he knew her thoroughly, he yet 
remained a deferential son, he had sworn never to 
abandon this stubbornly respectful attitude. Thus, 
the moment she touched certain subjects, he took 
refuge in absolute silence. 

'‘Come,” she continued; 'T can understand that 
you should not wish to yield to Clotilde ; but to 
me? How if I were to entreat you to make me the 
sacrifice of all those abominable papers which are 
there in the press ! Consider for an instant if you 
should die suddenly, and those papers should fall 
into strange hands. We should all be disgraced. 
You would not wish that, would you? What is 
your object, then ? Why do you persist in so danger- 
ous a game? Promise me that you will burn them.” 

He remained silent for a time, but at last he 
answered : 

“Mother, I have already begged of you never to 
speak on that subject. I cannot do what you ask.” 

“But at least,” she cried, “give me a reason. 
Anyone would think our family was as indifferent 
to you as that drove of oxen passing below there. 
Yet you belong to it. Oh, I know you do all you 
can not to belong to it! I myself am sometimes 
astonished at you. I ask myself where you can have 
come from. But for all that, it is very wicked of 
you to run this risk, without stopping to think of 
the grief you are causing to me, your mother. It 
is simply wicked.” 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


131 


He grew still paler, and yielding for an instant to 
his desire to defend himself, in spite of his deter- 
mination to keep silent, he said: 

“You are hard ; you are wrong. I have always 
believed in the necessity, the absolute efficacy of 
truth. It is true that I tell the truth about others 
and about myself, and it is because I believe firmly 
that in telling the truth I do the only good possible. 
In the first place, those papers are not intended for 
the public ; they are only personal notes which it 
would be painful to me to part with. And then, I 
know well that you \vould not burn only them — all 
my other works would also be thrown into the fire. 
Would they not? And that is what I do not wish; 
do you understand? Never, while I live, shall a 
line of my writing be destroyed here.” 

But he already regretted having said so much, for 
he saw that she was urging him, leading him on to 
the cruel explanation she desired. 

“Then finish, and tell me what it is that you 
reproach us with. Yes, me, for instance; what do 
you reproach me with? Not with having brought 
you up with so much difficulty. Ah, fortune was 
slow to win ! If we enjoy a little happiness now, we 
have earned it hard. Since you have seen every- 
thing, and since you put down everything in your 
papers, you can testify with truth that the family 
has rendered greater services to others than it has 
ever received. On two occasions, but for us, Plas- 
sans would have been in a fine pickle. And it is 
perfectly natural that we should have reaped only 


1 3 2 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


ingratitude and envy, to the extent that even to-day 
the whole town would be enchanted with a scandal 
that should bespatter us with mud. You cannot 
wish that, and I am sure that you will do justice to 
the dignity of my attitude since the fall of the 
Empire, and the misfortunes from which France 
will no doubt never recover.” 

“Let France rest, mother,” he said, speaking 
again*, for she had touched the spot where she knew 
he was most sensitive. “France is tenacious of life, 
and I think she is going to astonish the world by 
the rapidity of her convalescence. True, she has 
many elements of corruption. I have not sought 
to hide them, I have rather, perhaps, exposed them 
to view. But you greatly misunderstand me if you 
imagine that I believe in her final dissolution, 
because I point out her wounds and her lesions. I 
believe in the life which ceaselessly eliminates hurt- 
ful substances, which makes new flesh to fill the 
holes eaten away by gangrene, which infallibly ad- 
vances toward health, toward constant renovation, 
amid impurities and death.” 

He was growing excited, and he was conscious of 
it, and making an angry gesture, he spoke no more. 
His mother had recourse to tears, a few little tears 
which came with difficulty, and which were quickly 
dried. And the fears which saddened her old age 
returned to her, and she entreated him to make his 
peace with God, if only out of regard for the family. 
Had she not given an example of courage ever 
since the downfall of the Empire? Did not all 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


133 • 


Plassans, the quarter of St. Marc, the old quarter 
and the new town, render homage to the noble atti- 
tude she maintained in her fall? All she asked was 
to be helped ; she demanded from all her children an 
effort like her own. Thus she cited the example 
of Eugene, the great man who had fallen from so 
lofty a height, and who resigned himself to being 
a simple deputy, defending until his latest breath 
the fallen government from which he had derived 
his glory. She was also full of eulogies of Aristide, 
who had never lost hope, who had reconquered, 
under the new government, an exalted position, in 
spite of the terrible and unjust catastrophe which 
had for a moment buried him under the ruins of the 
Union Universelle. And would he, Pascal, hold 
himself aloof, would he do nothing that she might 
die in peace, in the joy of the final triumph of the 
Rougons, he who was so intelligent, so affectionate, 
so good? He would go to mass, would he not, next 
Sunday? and he would burn all those vile papers, 
only to think of which made her ill. She entreated, 
commanded, threatened. But he no longer an- 
swered her, calm and invincible in his attitude of 
perfect deference. He wished to have no discus- 
sion. He knew her too well either to hope to con- 
vince her or to venture to discuss the past with her. 

“Why!” she cried, when she saw that he was not 
to be moved, “you do not belong to us. I have 
always said so. You are a disgrace to us.” 

He bent his head and said: 

“Mother, when you reflect you will forgive me.” 


34 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


On this day Felicity was beside herself with rage 
when she went away ; and when she met Martine at 
the door of the house, in front of the plane trees, 
she unburdened her mind to her, without knowing 
that Pascal, who had just gone into his room, heard 
all. She gave vent to her resentment, vowing, in 
spite of everything, that she would in the end 
succeed in obtaining possession of the papers and 
destroying them, since he did not wish to make the 
sacrifice. But what turned the doctor cold was the 
manner in which Martine, in a subdued voice, soothed 
her. She was evidently her accomplice. She re- 
peated that it was necessary to wait ; not to do 
anything hastily ; that mademoiselle and she had 
taken a vow to get the better of monsieur, by not 
leaving him an hour’s peace. They had sworn it. 
They would reconcile him with the good God, 
because it was not possible that an upright man like 
monsieur should remain without religion. And the 
voices of the two women became lower and lower, 
until they finally sank to a whisper, an indistinct 
murmur of gossiping and plotting, of which he 
caught only a word here and there; orders given, 
measures to be taken, an invasion of his personal 
liberty. When his mother at last departed, with 
her light step and slender, youthful figure, he saw 
that she went away very well satisfied. 

Then came a moment of weakness, of utter despair. 
Pascal dropped into a chair, and asked himself 
what was the use of struggling, since the only beings 
he loved allied themselves against him. Martine, 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


135 


who would have thrown herself into the fire at a word 
from him, betraying him in this way for his good! 
And Clotilde leagued with this servant, plotting with 
her against him in holes and corners, seeking her aid 
to set traps for him! Now he was indeed alone; fie 
had around him only traitresses, who poisoned the 
very air he breathed. But these two still loved him. 
He might perhaps have succeeded in softening them, 
but when he knew that his mother urged them on, 
he understood their fierce persistence, and he gave 
up the hope of winning them back. With the 
timidity of a man who had spent his life in study, 
aloof from women, notwithstanding his secret pas- 
sion, the thought that they were there to oppose him, 
to attempt to bend him to their will, overwhelmed 
him. He felt that some one of them was always be- 
hind him. Even when he shut himself up in his 
room, he fancied that they were on the other side of 
the wall ; and he was constantly haunted by the idea 
that they would rob him of his thought, if they could 
perceive it in his brain, before he should have form- 
ulated it. 

This was assuredly the period in his life in which 
Dr. Pascal was most unhappy. To live constantly 
on the defensive, as he was obliged to do, crushed 
him, and it seemed to him as if the ground on 
which his house stood was no longer his, as if it 
was receding from beneath his feet. He now 
regretted keenly that he had not married, and that 
he had no children. Had not he himself been afraid 
of life? And had he not been well punished for his 


i 3 6 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


selfishness? This regret for not having children 
now never left him. His eyes now filled with tears 
whenever he met on the road bright-eyed little- girls 
who smiled at him. True, Clotilde was there, but 
his affection for her was of a different kind — crossed 
at present by storms — not a calm, infinitely sweet 
affection, like that for a child with which he might 
have soothed his lacerated heart. And then, no 
doubt what he desired in his isolation, feeling 
that his days were drawing to an end, was above 
all, continuance; in a child he would survive, he 
would live forever. The more he suffered, the 
greater the consolation he would have found in 
bequeathing this suffering, in the faith which he 
still had in life. He considered himself indemnified 
for the physiological defects of his family. But even 
the thought that heredity sometimes passes over a 
generation, and that the disorders of his ancestors 
might reappear in a child of his did not deter him ; 
and this unknown child, in spite of the old corrupt 
stock, in spite of the long succession of execrable 
relations, he desired ardently at certain times: as 
one desires unexpected gain, rare happiness, the 
stroke of fortune which is to console and enrich 
forever. In the shock which his other affections 
had received, his heart bled because it was too late. 

One sultry night toward the end of September, Pas- 
cal found himself unable to sleep. He opened one 
of the windows of his room ; the sky was dark, 
some storm must be passing in the distance, for 
there was a continuous rumbling of thunder. He 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


137 


could distinguish vaguely the dark mass of the 
plane trees, which occasional flashes of lightning 
detached, in a dull green, from the darkness. His 
soul was full of anguish; he lived over again the 
last unhappy days, days of fresh quarrels, of torture 
caused by acts of treachery, by suspicions, which 
grew stronger every day, when a sudden recollection 
made him start. In his fear of being robbed, he 
had finally adopted the plan of carrying the key of 
the large press in his pocket. But this afternoon, 
oppressed by the heat, he had taken off his jacket, 
and he remembered having seen Clotilde hang it up 
on a nail in the study. A sudden pang of terror 
shot through him, sharp and cold as a steel point ; 
if she had felt the key in the pocket she had stolen 
it. He hastened to search the jacket which he had 
a little before thrown upon a chair; the key was not 
here. At this very moment he was being robbed; 
he had the clear conviction of it. Two o’clock 
struck. He did not again dress himself, but, 
remaining in his trousers only, with his bare feet 
thrust into slippers, his chest bare under his unfas- 
tened nightshirt, he hastily pushed open the door, 
and rushed into the workroom, his candle in his 
hand. 

“Ah! I knew it,” he cried. ‘‘Thief! assassin!” 

It was true; Clotilde was there, undressed like 
himself, her bare feet covered by canvas slippers, 
her legs bare, her arms bare, her shoulders bare, 
clad only in her chemise and a short skirt. Through 
caution, she had not brought a candle. She had con- 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


138 

tented herself with opening one of the window shut- 
ters, and the continual lightning flashes of the 
storm which was passing southward in the dark sky, 
sufficed her, bathing everything in a livid phosphor 
escence. The old press, with its broad sides, was 
wide open. Already she had emptied the top shelf, 
taking down the papers in armfuls, and throwing 
them on the long table in the middle of the room, 
where they lay in a confused heap. And with fev- 
erish haste, fearing lest she should not have the 
time to burn them, she was making them up into 
bundles, intending to hide them, and send them 
afterward to her grandmother, when the sudden 
flare of the candle, lighting up the room, caused her 
to stop short in an attitude of surprise and re- 
sistance. 

“You rob me; you assassinate me!” repeated 
Pascal furiously. 

She still held one of the bundles in her bare arms. 
He wished to take it away from her, but she pressed 
it to her with all her strength, obstinately resolved 
upon her work of destruction, without showing 
confusion or repentance, like a combatant who has 
right upon his side. Then, madly, blindly, he threw 
himself upon her, and they struggled together. He 
clutched her bare flesh so that he hurt her. 

“Kill me!” she gasped. “Kill me, or I shall 
destroy everything!” 

He held her close to him, with so rough a grasp 
that she could scarcely breathe, crying: 

“When a child steals, it is punished !” 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


1 39 


A few drops of blood appeared and trickled down 
her rounded shoulder, where an abrasion had cut the 
delicate satin skin. And, on the instant, seeing 
her so breathless, so divine, in her virginal slender 
height, with her tapering limbs, her supple arms, her 
slim body with its slender, firm throat, he released 
her. By a last effort he tore the package from her. 

“And you shall help me to put them all up there 
again, by Heaven ! Come here : begin by arranging 
them on the table. Obey me, do you hear?” 

“Yes, master!” 

She approached, and helped him to arrange the 
papers, subjugated, crushed by this masculine grasp, 
which had entered into her flesh, as it were. The 
candle which flared up in the heavy night air, 
lighted them; and the distant rolling of the thunder 
still continued, the window facing the storm seem- 
ing on fire. 


V. 


For an instant Pascal looked at the papers, the 
heap of which seemed enormous, lying thus in dis- 
order on the long table that stood in the middle of 
the room. In the confusion several of the blue 
paper envelopes had burst open, and their contents 
had fallen out — letters, newspaper clippings, docu- 
ments on stamped paper, and manuscript notes. 

He was already mechanically beginning to seek out 
the names written on the envelopes in large char- 
acters, to classify the packages again, when, with an 
abrupt gesture, he emerged from the somber medita- 
tion into which he had fallen. And turning to Clotilde 
who stood waiting, pale, silent, and erect, he said : 

“Listen to me ; I have always forbidden you to 
read these papers, and I know that you have 
obeyed me. Yes, I had scruples of delicacy. It is 
not that you are an ignorant girl, like so many 
others, for I have allowed you to learn everything 
concerning man and woman, which is assuredly bad 
only for bad natures. But to what end disclose to 
you too early these terrible truths of human life? 
I have therefore spared you the history of our 
family, which is the history of every family, of all 
humanity; a great deal of evil and a great deal of 
good.” 


140 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


141 

He paused as if to confirm himself in his reso- 
lution and then resumed quite calmly and with 
supreme energy : 

“You are twenty-five years old; you ought to 
know. And then the life we are leading is no 
longer possible. You live and you make me live in 
a constant nightmare, with your ecstatic dreams. I 
prefer to show you the reality, however execrable 
it may be. Perhaps the blow which it will inflict 
upon you will make of you the woman you ought 
to be. We will classify these papers again together, 
and read them, and learn from them a terrible les- 
son 6f life !” 

Then, as she still continued motionless, he re- 
sumed : 

“Come, we must be able to see well. Light those 
other two candles there.” 

He was seized by a desire for light, a flood of 
light ; he would have desired the blinding light of 
the sun ; and thinking that the light of the three 
candles was not sufficient, he went into his room for 
a pair of three-branched candelabra which were 
there. The nine candles were blazing, yet neither 
of them, i i their disorder — he with his chest bare, 
she with Per left shoulder stained with blood, her 
throat anc arms bare — saw the other. It was past 
two o’clock, but neither of them had any con- 
sciousness of the hour; they were going to spend 
the night in this eager desire for knowledge, with- 
out feeling the need of sleep, outside time and 
space. The mutterings of the storm, which, 


142 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


through the open window, they could see gather 
ing, grew louder and louder. 

Clotilde had never before seen in Pascal’s eyes 
the feverish light which burned in them now. He 
had been overworking himself for some time past, 
and his mental sufferings made him at times abrupt, 
in spite of his good-natured complacency. But it 
seemed as if an infinite tenderness, trembling with 
fraternal pity, awoke within him, now that he was 
about to plunge into the painful truths of existence; 
and it was something emanating from himself, 
something very great and very good which was to 
render innocuous the terrible avalanche of facts 
which was impending. He was determined that he 
would reveal everything, since it was necessary that 
he should do so in order to remedy everything. 
Was not this an unanswerable, a final argument for 
evolution, the story of these beings who were so 
near to them? Such was life, and it must be lived. 
Doubtless she would emerge from it like the steel 
tempered by the fire, full of tolerance and courage. 

“They are setting you against me,” he resumed; 
“they are making you commit abominable acts, and 
I wish to restore your conscience to you. When 
you know, you will judge and you will act. Come 
here, and read with me.” 

She obeyed. But these papers, about which her 
grandmother had spoken so angrily, frightened her 
a little ; while a curiosity that grew with every 
moment awoke within her. And then, dominated 
though she was by the virile authority which had 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


M 3 

just constrained and subjugated her, she did not 
yet yield. But might she not listen to him, read 
with him? Did she not retain the right to refuse 
or to give herself afterward? He spoke at last. 

“Will you come?” 

‘‘Yes, master, I will.” 

He showed her first the genealogical tree of the 
Rougon-Macquarts. He did not usually lock it in 
the press, but kept it in the desk in his room, from 
which he had taken it when he went there for the 
candelabra. For more than twenty years past he 
had kept it up to date, inscribing the births, deaths, 
marriages, and other important events that had 
taken place in the family, making brief notes in 
each case, in accordance with his theory of heredity. 

It was a large sheet of paper, yellow with age, 
with folds cut by wear, on which was drawn boldly 
a symbolical tree, whose branches spread and sub- 
divided into five rows of broad leaves; and each 
leaf bore a name, and contained, in minute hand- 
writing, a biography, a hereditary case. 

A scientist’s joy took possession of the doctor at 
sight of this labor of twenty years, in which the 
laws of heredity established by him were so clearly 
and so completely applied. 

“Look, child! You know enough about the 
matter, you have copied enough of my notes to 
understand. Is it not beautiful? A document so 
complete, so conclusive, in which there is not a gap? 
It is like an experiment made in the laboratory, a 
problem stated and solved on the blackboard. You 


144 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


see below, the trunk, the common stock, Aunt 
Dide; then the three branches issuing from it, the 
legitimate branch, Pierre Rougon, and the two 
illegitimate branches, Ursule Macquart and Antoine 
Macquart; then, new branches arise, and ramify, on 
one side, Maxime, Clotilde, and Victor, the three 
children of Saccard, and Angelique, the daughter of 
Sidonie Rougon; on the other, Pauline, the daugh- 
ter of Lisa Macquart, and Claude, Jacques, Etienne, 
and Anna, the four children of Gervaise, her sister; 
there, at the extremity is Jean, their brother, and 
here in the middle, you see what I call the knot, 
the legitimate issue and the illegitimate issue, 
uniting in Marthe Rougon and her cousin Francois 
Mouret, to give rise to three new branches, Octave, 
Serge, and Desiree Mouret; while there is also the 
issue of Ursule and the hatter Mouret, Silvere, 
whose tragic death you know, H£Rne and her 
daughter Jeanne ; finally, at the top are the latest 
offshoots, our poor Charles, your brother Maxime’s 
son, and two other children, who are dead, Jacques 
Louis, the son of Claude Lantier, and Louiset, the 
son of Anna Coupeau. In all five generations, a 
human tree which, for five springs already, five 
springtides of humanity, has sent forth shoots, at 
the impulse of the sap of eternal life.” 

He became more and more animated, pointing 
out each case on the sheet of old yellow paper, as if 
it were an anatomical chart. 

“And as I have already said, everything is here. 
You see in direct heredity, the differentiations, that 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


145 


of the mother, Silvere, Lisa, Desiree, Jacques, Lou- 
iset, yourself; that of the father, Sidonie, Francois, 
Gervaise, Octave, Jacques Louis. Then there are 
the three cases of crossing: by conjugation, Ursule, 
Aristide, Anna, Victor ; by dissemination, Maxime, 
Serge, Etienne ; by fusion, Antoine, Eugene, Claude. 
I even noted a fourth case, a very remarkable one, 
an even cross, Pierre and Pauline ; and varieties are 
established, the differentiation of the mother, for 
example, often accords with the physical resemblance 
of the father ; or, it is the contrary which takes place, 
so that, in the crossing, the physical and mental 
predominance remains with one parent or the other, 
according to circumstances. Then here is indirect 
heredity, that of the collateral branches. I have 
but one well established example of this, the strik- 
ing personal resemblance of Octave Mouret to his 
uncle Eugene Rougon. I have also but one exam- 
ple of transmission by influence, Anna the daughter 
of Gervaise and Coupeau, who bore a striking resem- 
blance, especially in her childhood, to Lantier, her 
mother’s first lover. But what I am very rich in is 
in examples of reversion to the original stock — the 
three finest cases, Marthe, Jeanne, and Charles, 
resembling Aunt Dide; the resemblance thus pass- 
ing over one, two, and three generations. This is 
certainly exceptional, for I scarcely believe in 
atavism ; it seems to me that the new elements 
brought by the partners, accidents, and the infinite 
variety of crossings must rapidly efface particular 
characteristics, so as to bring back the individual to 


146 DOCTOR RASCAL . 

the general type. And there remains variation— 
Helene, Jean, Angelique. This is the combination, 
the chemical mixture in which the physical and 
mental characteristics of the parents are blended, 
without any of their traits seeming to reappear in 
the new being.” 

There was silence for a moment. Clotilde had 
listened to him with profound attention, wishing to 
understand. And he remained absorbed in thought, 
his eyes still fixed on the tree, in the desire to judge 
his work impartially. He then continued in a low’ 
tone, as if speaking to himself: 

“Yes, that is as scientific as possible. I have 
placed there only the members of the family, and I 
had to give an equal part to the partners, to the 
fathers and mothers come from outside, whose 
blood has mingled with ours, and therefore modified 
it. I had indeed, made a mathematically exact 
tree, the father and the mother bequeathing them- 
selves, by halves, to the child, from generation to 
generation, so that in Charles, for example, Aunt 
Dide’s part would have been only a twelfth — which 
would be absurd, since the physical resemblance is 
there complete. I have therefore thought it suffi- 
cient to indicate the elements come from elsewhere, 
taking into account marriages and the new factor 
which each introduced. Ah! these sciences that 
are yet in their infancy, in which hypothesis speaks 
stammeringly, and imagination rules, these are the 
domain of the poet as much as of the scientist. 
Poets go as pioneers in the advance guard, and they 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


147 


often discover new countries, suggesting solutions. 
There is there a borderland which belongs to them, 
between the conquered, the definitive truth, and the 
unknown, whence the truth of to-morrow will be 
torn. What an immense fresco there is to be 
painted, what a stupendous human tragedy, what a 
comedy there is to be written with heredity, which 
is the very genesis of families, of societies, and of 
the world !” 

His eyes fixed on vacancy, he remained fora time 
lost in thought. Then, with an' abrupt movement, 
he came back to the envelopes and, pushing the tree 
aside, said : 

“We will take it up again presently; for, in order 
that you may understand now, it is necessary that 
events should pass in review before you, and that 
you should see in action all these actors ticketed 
here, each one summed up in a brief note. I will 
call for the envelopes, you will hand them to me 
one by one, and I will show you the papers in each, 
and tell you their contents, before putting it away 
again up there on the shelf. I will not follow the 
alphabetical order, but the order of events them- 
selves. I have long wished to make this classifica- 
tion. Come, look for the names on the envelopes; 
Aunt Dide first.” 

At this moment the edge of the storm which 
lighted up the sky caught La Souleiade slantingly, 
and burst over the house in a deluge of rain. But 
they did not even close the window. They heard 
neither the peals of thunder nor the ceaseless beat- 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


148 

ing of the rain upon the roof. She handed him the 
envelope bearing the name of Aunt Dide in large 
characters ; and he took from it papers of all sorts, 
notes taken by him long ago, which he proceeded 
to read. 

“Hand me Pierre Rougon. Hand me Ursule 
Macquart. Hand me Antoine Macquart.” 

Silently she obeyed him, her heart oppressed by 
a dreadful anguish at all she was hearing. And the 
envelopes were passed on, displayed their contents, 
and were piled up again in the press. 

First was the foundress of the family, Adelaide 
Fouqu£, the tall, crazy girl, the first nervous lesion 
giving rise to the legitimate branch, Pierre Rougon, 
and to the two illegitimate branches, Ursule and 
Antoine Macquart, all that bourgeois and sanguinary 
tragedy, with the coup d'dtat of December, 1854, for 
a background, the Rougons, Pierre and Felicity, 
preserving order at Plassans, bespattering with the 
blood of Silv&re their rising fortunes, while Ade- 
laide, grown old, the miserable Aunt Dide, was 
shut up in the Tulettes, like a specter of expiation 
and of waiting. 

Then, like a pack of hounds, the appetites were let 
loose. The supreme appetite of power in Eugene 
Rougon, the great man, the disdainful genius of the 
family, free from base interests, 1 ving power for its 
own sake, conquering Paris in old boots with the 
adventurers of the coming Empire, rising from the 
legislative body to the senate, passing from the 
presidency of the council of state to the portfolio of 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


149 


minister; made by his party, a hungry crowd of 
followers, who at the same time supported and 
devoured him; conquered for an instant by a 
woman, the beautiful Clorinde, with whom he had 
been imbecile enough to fall in love, but having 
so strong a will, and burning with so vehement 
a desire to rule, that he won back power by giving 
the lie to his whole life, marching to his triumphal 
sovereignty of vice emperor. 

With Aristide Saccard, appetite ran to low pleas- 
ures, the whole hot quarry of money, luxury, women 
— a devouring hunger which left him homeless, at the 
time when millions were changing hands, when the 
whirlwind of wild speculation was blowing through 
the city, tearing down everywhere to construct 
anew, when princely fortunes were made, squan- 
dered, and remade in six months; a greed of gold 
whose ever increasing fury carried him away, caus- 
ing him, almost before the body of his wife Angele 
was cold in death, to sell his name, in order to have 
the first indispensable thousand francs, by marrying 
Ren£e. And it was Saccard, too, who, a few years 
later, put in motion the immense money-press of 
the Banque Universelle. Saccard, the never van- 
quished; Saccard, grown more powerful, risen to be 
the clever and daring grand financier, comprehend- 
ing the fierce and civilizing role that money plays, 
fighting, winning, and losing battles on the Bourse, 
like Napoleon at Austerlitz and Waterloo; engulf- 
ing in disaster a world of miserable people; sending 
forth i? to the unknown realms of crime his natural 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


15 ° 

son Victor, who disappeared, fleeing through the 
dark night, while he himself, under the impassable 
protection of unjust nature, was loved by the adora- 
ble Mme. Caroline, no doubt in recompense of all 
the evil he had done. 

Here a tall, spotless lily had bloomed in this 
compost, Sidonie Rougon, the sycophant of her 
brother, the go-between in a hundred suspicious 
affairs, giving birth to the pure and divine Ange- 
lique, the little embroiderer with fairylike fingers 
who worked into the gold of the chasubles the 
dream of her Prince Charming, so happy among her 
companions the saints, so little made for the hard 
realities of life, that she obtained the grace of dying 
of love, on the day of her marriage, at the first kiss 
of Felicien de Hautecoeur, in the triumphant peal 
of bells ringing for her splendid nuptials. 

The union of the two branches, the legitimate and 
the illegitimate, took place then, Marthe Rougon 
espousing her cousin Francois Mouret, a peaceful 
household slowly disunited, ending in the direst 
catastrophes — a sad and gentle woman taken, made 
use of, and crushed in the vast machine of war 
erected for the conquest of a city ; her three chil- 
dren torn from her, she herself leaving her heart in 
the rude grasp of the Abbe Faujas. And the Rou- 
gons saved Plassans a second time, while she was 
dying in the glare of the conflagration in which 
her husband was being consumed, mad with long 
pent-up rage and the desire for revenge. 

Of the three children, Octave Mouret was the 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


* 5 * 

audacious conqueror, the clear intellect, resolved to 
demand from the women the sovereignty of Paris, 
fallen at his dtbut into the midst of a corrupt bour- 
geois society, acquiring there a terrible sentimental 
education, passing from the capricious refusal of one 
woman to the unresisting abandonment of another, 
remaining, fortunately, active, laborious, and combat- 
ive, gradually emerging, and improved even, from 
the low plotting, the ceaseless ferment of a rotten 
society that could be heard already cracking to its 
foundations. And Octave Mouret, victorious, rev- 
olutionized commerce; swallowed up the cautious 
little shops that carried on business in the old- 
fashioned way; established in the midst of feverish 
Paris the colossal palace of temptation, blazing with 
lights, overflowing with velvets, silks, and laces; 
won fortunes exploiting woman; lived in smiling 
scorn of woman until the day when a little girl, the 
avenger of her sex, the innocent and wise Denise, 
vanquished him and held him captive at her feet, 
groaning with anguish, until she did him the favor, 
she who was so poor, to marry him in the midst of 
the apotheosis of his Louvre, under the golden 
shower of his receipts. 

There remained the two other children, Serge 
Mouret and Desiree Mouret, the latter innocent and 
healthy, like some happy young animal; the former 
refined and mystical, who was thrown into the 
priesthood by a nervous malady hereditary in his 
family, and who lived again the story of Adam, in 
the Eden of Le Paradou. He was born again to 


doctor Pascal. 


* 5 2 

love Albine, and to lose her, in the bosom of sub- 
lime nature, their accomplice; to be recovered, 
afterward by the Church, to war eternally with life, 
striving to kill his manhood, throwing on the body 
of the dead Albine the handful of earth, as officiat- 
ing priest, at the very time when Desiree, the sister 
and friend of animals, was rejoicing in the midst of 
the swarming life of her poultry yard. 

Further on there opened a calm glimpse of gentle 
and tragic life, Helene Mouret living peacefully with 
her little girl, Jeanne, on the heights of Passy, over- 
looking Paris, the bottomless, boundless human sea, 
in face of which was unrolled this page of love: the 
sudden passion of Helene for a stranger, a physician, 
brought one night by chance to the bedside of her 
daughter; the morbid jealousy of Jeanne — the in- 
stinctive jealousy of a loving girl — disputing her 
mother with love, her mother already so wasted by her 
unhappy passion that she died because of her fault; 
terrible price of one hour of desire in the entire cold 
and discreet life of a woman, poor dead woman, lying 
alone in the silent cemetery, in face of eternal Paris. 

With Lisa Macquart began the illegitimate 
branch; appearing fresh and strong in her, as she 
displayed her portly, prosperous figure, sitting at 
the door of her pork shop in a light colored apron, 
watching the central market, where the hunger 
of a people muttered, the age-long battle of the 
Fat and the Lean, the lean Florent, her brother-in- 
law, execrated, and set upon by the fat fishwomen 
and the fat shopwomen, and whom even the fat 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


153 

pork-seller herself, honest, but unforgiving, caused 
to be arrested as a republican who had broken his 
ban, convinced that she was laboring for the good 
digestion of all honest people. 

From this mother sprang the sanest, the most 
human of girls, Pauline Quenu, the well-balanced, the 
reasonable, the virgin; who, knowing everything, 
accepted the joy of living, in so ardent a love for 
others that, in spite of the revolt of her youthful 
heart, she resigned to her friend her cousin and 
betrothed, Lazare, and afterward saved the child of 
the disunited household, becoming its true mother; 
always triumphant, always gay, notwithstanding her 
sacrificed and ruined life, in her monotonous solitude, 
facing the great sea, in the midst of a little world of 
sufferers groaning with pain, but who did not wish 
to die. 

Then came Gervaise Macquart with her four chil- 
dren : bandy-legged, pretty, and industrious Ger- 
vaise, whom her lover Lantier turned into the street 
in the faubourg, where she met the zinc worker Cou- 
peau, the skillful, steady workman whom she married, 
and with whom she lived so happily at first, having 
three women working in her laundry, but afterward 
sinking with her husband, as was inevitable, to the 
degradation of her surroundings. He, gradually con- 
quered by alcohol, brought by it to madness and 
death ; she herself perverted, become a slattern, her 
moral ruin completed by the return of Lantier, living 
in the tranquil ignominy of a household of three, 
thenceforward the wretched victim of want, her 


154 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


accomplice, to which she at last succumbed, dying 
one night of starvation. Her elder brother, Claude, 
had the unhappy genius of a great painter struck with 
madness, the impotent madness of feeling within 
him the masterpiece to which his fingers refused to 
give shape; a giant wrestler always defeated, a cru- 
cified martyr to his work, adoring woman, sacrificing 
his wife Christine, so loving and for a time so be- 
loved, to the increate, divine woman of his visions, 
but whom his pencil was unable to delineate in her 
nude perfection, possessed by a devouring passion 
for producing, an insatiable longing to create, a long- 
ing so torturing when it could not be satisfied, that 
he ended it by hanging himself. 

Jacques brought crime, the hereditary taint being 
transmuted in him into an instinctive appetite for 
blood, the young and fresh blood from the gashed 
throat of a woman, the first comer, the passer-by in 
the street : a horrible malady against which he 
struggled, but which took possession of him again 
in the course of his amour with the submissive and 
sensual Severine, whom a tragic story of assassina- 
tion caused to live in constant terror, and whom he 
stabbed one evening in an access of frenzy, mad- 
dened by the sight of her white throat. Then 
this savage human beast rushed among the trains 
filing past swiftly, and mounted the snorting engine 
of which he was the engineer, the beloved engine 
which was one day to crush him to atoms, and then, 
left without a guide, to rush furiously off into space, 
braving unknown disasters. 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


J 55 


Etienne, in his turn driven out, arrived in the black 
country on a freezing night in March, descended into 
the voracious pit, fell in love with the melancholy 
Catherine, of whom a ruffian robbed him; lived with 
the miners their gloomy life of misery and base pro- 
miscuousness, until one day when hunger, prompting 
rebellion, sent across the barren plain a howling mob 
of wretches who demanded bread, tearing down 
and burning as they went, under the menace of the 
guns of the band that went off of themselves, a 
terrible convulsion announcing the end of a world. 
The avenging blood of the Maheus was to rise up 
later; of Alzire dead of starvation, Maheu killed by a 
ballet, Zacharie killed by an explosion of fire-damp, 
Catherine under the ground. La Maheude alone 
survived to weep her dead, descending again into the 
mine to earn her thirty sous, while Etienne, the 
beaten chief of the band, haunted by the dread of 
future demands, went away on a warm April morn - 
ing, listening to the secret growth of the new world 
whose germination was soon to dazzle the earth. 

Nana then became the avenger; the girl born 
among the social filth of the faubourgs, the golden 
fly sprung from the rottenness below, that was toler- 
ated and concealed, carrying in the fluttering of its 
wings the ferment of destruction, rising and con- 
taminating the aristocracy, poisoning men only by 
alighting upon them, in the palaces through whose 
windows it entered; the unconscious instrument of 
ruin and death — fierce flame of Vandeuvres, the 
melancholy fate of Foucarmont, lost in the Chinese 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


*56 

waters, the disaster of Steiner, reduced to live as an 
honest man, the imbecility of La Faloise and the 
tragic ruin of the Muffats, and the white corpse of 
Georges, watched by Philippe, come out of prison 
the day before, when the air of the epoch was so 
contaminated that she herself was infected, and died 
of malignant smallpox, caught at the deathbed of 
her son Louiset, while Paris passed beneath her win- 
dows, intoxicated, possessed by the frenzy of war, 
rushing to general ruin. 

Lastly comes Jean Macquart, the workman and sol- 
dier become again a peasant, fighting with the hard 
earth, which exacts that every grain of corn shall be 
purchased with a drop of sweat, fighting, above all, 
with the country people, whom covetousness and 
the long and difficult battle with the soil cause to 
burn with the desire, incessantly stimulated, of pos- 
session. Witness the Fouans, grown old, parting 
with their fields ls if they were parting with their 
flesh; the Buteaus in their eager greed committing 
parricide, to hasten the inheritance of a field of lucern ; 
the stubborn Fran^oise dying from the stroke of a 
scythe, without speaking, rather than that a sod 
should go out of the family — all this drama of simple 
natures governed by instinct, scarcely emerged from 
primitive barbarism — all this human filth on the 
great earth, which alone remains immortal, the 
mother from whom they issue and to whom they 
return again, she whom they love even to crime, 
who continually remakes life, for its unknown 
end, even with the misery and the abomination of 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


*57 


the beings she nourishes. And it was Jean, too, 
who, become a widower and having enlisted again at 
the first rumor of war, brought the inexhaustible 
reserve, the stock of eternal rejuvenation which the 
earth keeps; Jean, the humblest, the stanchest 
soldier at the final downfall; swept along in the 
terrible and fatal storm which, from the frontier to 
Sedan, in sweeping away the Empire, threatened to 
sweep away the country; always wise, circumspect, 
firm in his hope, loving with fraternal affection his 
comrade Maurice, the demented child of the people, 
the holocaust doomed to expiation, weeping tears 
of blood when inexorable destiny chose himself to 
hew off this rotten limb, and after all had ended — 
the continual defeats, the frightful civil war, the 
lost provinces, the thousands of millions of francs 
to pay —taking up the march again, notwithstand- 
ing, returning to the land which awaited him, to the 
great and difficult task of making a new France. 

Pascal paused ; Clotilde had handed him all the 
packages, one by one, and he had gone over them 
all, laid bare the contents of all, classified them 
anew, and placed them again on the top shelf of 
the press. He was out of breath, exhausted by his 
swift course through all this humanity, while, with- 
out voice, without movement, the young girl, 
stunned by this overflowing torrent of life, waited 
still, incapable of thought or judgment. The rain 
still beat furiously upon the dark fields. The 
lightning had just struck a tree in the neighbor- 
hood, that had split with a terrible crash. The 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


158 

candles flared up in the wind that came in from the 
open window. 

“Ah!” he resumed, pointing to the papers again, 
“there is a world in itself, a society, a civilization, 
the whole of life is there, with its manifestations, 
good and bad, in the heat and labor of the forge 
which shapes everything. Yes, our family of itself 
would suffice as an example to science, which will 
perhaps one day establish with mathematical exact- 
ness the laws governing the diseases of the blood 
and nerves that show themselves in a race, after a 
first organic lesion, and that determine, according 
to environment, the sentiments, desires, and pas- 
sions of each individual of that race, all the human, 
natural, and instinctive manifestations which take 
the names of virtues and vices. And it is also a 
historical document, it relates the story of the Sec- 
ond Empire, from the coup d'etat to Sedan; for our 
family spring from the people, they spread them- 
selves through the whole of contemporary society, 
invaded every place, impelled by their unbridled 
appetites, by that impulse, essentially modern, that 
eager desire that urges the lower classes to enjoy- 
ment, in their ascent through the social strata. 
We started, as I have said, from Plassans, and here 
we are now arrived once more at Plassans.” 

He paused again, and then resumed in a low, 
dreamy voice : 

“What an appalling mass stirred up! how many 
passions, how many joys, how many sufferings 
crammed into this colossal heap of facts! There is 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


J 59 


pure history: the Empire founded in blood, at first 
pleasure-loving and despotic, conquering rebellious 
cities, then gliding to a slow disintegration, dissolv- 
ing in blood — in such a sea of blood that the entire 
nation came near being swamped in it. There are 
social studies: wholesale and retail trade, prostitu- 
tion, crime, land, money, the bourgeoisie , the people — 
that people who rot in the sewer of the faubourgs, 
who rebel in the great industrial centers, all that 
ever-increasing growth of mighty socialism, big with 
the new century. There are simple human studies: 
domestic pages, love stories, the struggle of minds 
and hearts against unjust nature, the destruction of 
those who cry out under their too difficult task, the 
cry of virtue immolating itself, victorious over pain. 
There are fancies, flights of the imagination beyond 
the real : vast gardens always in bloom, cathe- 
drals with slender, exquisitely wrought spires, mar- 
velous tales come down from paradise, ideal 
affections remounting to heaven in a kiss. There 
is everything: the good and the bad, the vulgar and 
the sublime, flowers, mud, blood, laughter, the tor- 
rent of life itself, bearing humanity endlessly 
on 1” 

He took up again the genealogical tree which 
had remained neglected on the table, spread it out 
and began to go over it once more with his finger, 
enumerating now the members of the family who 
were still living: Eugene Rougon, a fallen majesty, 
who remained in the Chamber, the witness, the 
impassible defender of the old world swept away at 


i6o 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


the downfall of the Empire. Aristide Saccard, who, 
after having changed his principles, had fallen upon 
his feet a republican, the editor of a great journal, 
on the way to make new millions, while his natural 
son Victor, who had never reappeared, was living 
still in the shade, since he was not in the galleys, 
cast forth by the world into the future, into the 
unknown, like a human beast foaming with the 
hereditary virus, who must communicate his malady 
with every bite he gives. Sidonie Rougon, who 
had for a time disappeared, weary of disreputable 
affairs, had lately retired to a sort of religious 
house, where she was living in monastic austerity, 
the treasurer of the Marriage Fund, for aiding in 
the marriage of girls who were mothers. Octave 
Mouret, proprietor of the great establishment An 
Bonheur des Dames , whose colossal fortune still 
continued increasing, had had, toward the end of 
the winter, a third child by his wife Denise Baudu, 
whom he adored, although his mind was beginning 
to be deranged again. The Abbe Mouret, cur£ at 
St. Eutrope, in the heart of a marshy gorge, lived 
there in great retirement, and very modestly with 
his sister Desiree, refusing all advancement from 
his bishop, and waiting for death like a holy man, 
rejecting all medicines, although he was already 
suffering from consumption in its first stage. He- 
lene Mouret was living very happily in seclusion 
with her second husband, M. Rambaud, on the 
little estate which they owned near Marseilles, on 
the seashore; she had had no child by her second 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


161 


husband. Pauline Quenu was still at Bonneville at 
the other extremity of France, in face of the vast 
ocean, alone with little Paul, since the death of 
Uncle Chanteau, having resolved never to marry, in 
order to devote herself entirely to the son of her 
cousin Lazare, who had become a widower and had 
gone to America to make a fortune. Etienne Lan- 
tier, returning to Paris after the strike at Montsou, 
had compromised himself later in the insurrection 
of the Commune, whose principles he had defended 
with ardor ; he had been condemned to death, but 
his sentence being commuted was transported and 
was now at Nouema. It was even said that he had 
married immediately on his arrival there, and that he 
had had a child, the sex of which, however, was not 
known with certainty. Finally, Jean Macquart, 
who had received his discharge after the Bloody 
Week, had settled at . Valqueyras, near Plassans, 
where he had had the good fortune to marry a 
healthy girl, Melanie Vial, the daughter of a well- 
to-do peasant, whose lands he farmed, and his wife 
had borne him a son in May. 

“Yes, it is true," he resumed, in a low voice; 
“races degenerate. There is here a veritable ex- 
haustion, a rapid deterioration, as if our family, in 
their fury of enjoyment, in the gluttonous satisfac- 
tion of their appetites, had consumed themselves 
too quickly. Louiset, dead in infancy; Jacques 
Louis, a half imbecile, carried off by a nervous 
disease ; Victor returned to the savage state, wan- 
dering about in who knows what dark places; our 


162 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


poor Charles, so beautiful and so frail ; these are the 
latest branches of the tree, the last pale offshoots 
into which the puissant sap of the larger branches 
seems to have been unable to mount. The worm 
was in the trunk, it has ascended into the fruit, and 
is devouring it. But one must never despair; fam- 
ilies are a continual growth. They go back be- 
yond the common ancestor, into the unfathomable 
strata of the races that have lived, to the first being; 
and they will put forth new shoots without end, 
they will spread and ramify to infinity, through 
future ages. Look at our tree; it counts only five 
generations. It has not so much importance as a 
blade of grass, even, in the human forest, vast and 
dark, of which the peoples are the great secular 
oaks. Think only of the immense roots which 
spread through the soil; think of the continual put- 
ting forth of new leaves above, which mingle with 
other leaves of the ever rolling sea of treetops, at 
the fructifying, eternal breath of life. Well, hope 
lies there, in the daily reconstruction of the race by 
the new blood which comes from without. Each 
marriage brings other elements, good or bad, of 
which the effect is, however, to prevent certain and 
progressive degeneration. Breaches are repaired, 
faults effaced, an equilibrium is inevitably re-estab- 
lished at the end of a few generations, and it is the 
average man that always results ; vague humanity, 
obstinately pursuing its mysterious labor, marching 
toward its unknown end.” 

He paused, and heaved a deep sigh. 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 1 63 

“Ah! our family, what is it going to become; in 
what being will it finally end?” 

He continued, not now taking into account the 
survivors whom he had just named ; having classified 
these, he knew what they were capable of, but he was 
full of keen curiosity regarding the children who 
were still infants. He had written to a confrere in 
Noumea for precise information regarding the wife 
whom Etienne had lately married there, and the child 
which she had had, but he had heard nothing, and 
he feared greatly that on that side the tree would 
remain incomplete. He was more fully furnished 
with documents regarding the two children of 
Octave Mouret, with whom he continued to cor- 
respond ; the little girl was growing up puny and 
delicate, while the little boy, who strongly resem- 
bled his mother, had developed superbly, and was 
perfectly healthy. His strongest hope, besides 
these, was in Jean’s children, the eldest of whom 
was a magnificent boy, full of the youthful vigor of 
the races that go back to the soil to regenerate 
themselves. Pascal occasionally went to Valqueyras, 
and he returned happy from that fertile spot, where 
the father, quiet and rational, was always at his 
plow, the mother cheerful and simple, with her vig- 
orous frame, capable of bearing a world. Who 
knew what sound branch was to spring from that 
side? Perhaps the wise and puissant of the future 
were to germinate there. The worst of it, for the 
beauty of his tree, was that all these little boys and 
girls were still so young that he could not classify 


164 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


them. And his voice grew tender as he spoke of 
this hope of the future, these fair-haired children, in 
the unavowed regret for his celibacy. 

Still contemplating the tree spread out before 
him, he cried : 

“And yet it is complete, it is decisive. Look! I 
repeat to you that all hereditary cases are to be 
found there. To establish my theory, I had only to 
base it on the collection of these facts. And in- 
deed, the marvelous thing is that there you can put 
your finger on the cause why creatures born of the 
same stock can appear radically different, although 
they are only logical modifications of common 
ancestors. The trunk explains the branches, and 
these explain the leaves. In your father Saccard 
and your Uncle Eugene Rougon, so different in 
their temperaments and their lives, it is the same 
impulse which made the inordinate appetites of the 
one and the towering ambition of the other. An- 
gelique, that pure lily, is born from the disreputable 
Sidonie, in the rapture which make mystics or lov- 
ers, according to the environment. The three chil- 
dren of the Mourets are born of the same breath 
which makes of the clever Octave the dry goods 
merchant, a millionaire ; of the devout Serge, a poor 
country priest ; of the imbecile Desiree, a beautiful 
and happy girl. But the example is still more 
striking in the children of Gervaise ; the neurosis 
passes down, and Nana sells herself ; Etienne is a 
rebel; Jacques, a murderer ; Claude, a genius ; while 
Pauline, their cousin german, near by, is victorious 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


i6 5 

virtue— virtue which struggles and immolates itself. 
It is heredity, life itself, which makes imbeciles, 
madmen, criminals, and great men. Cells abort, 
others take their place, and we have a scoundrel 
or a madman instead of a man of genius, or simply 
an honest man. And humanity rolls on, bearing 
everything on its tide.” 

Then in a new shifting of his thought, growing 
still more animated, he continued : 

“And animals — the beast that suffers and that 
loves, which is the rough sketch, as it were, of man 
— all the animals our brothers, that live our life, 
yes, I would have put them in the ark, I would 
give them a place among our family, show them 
continually mingling with us, completing our exist- 
ence. I have known cats whose presence was the 
mysterious charm of the household; dogs that were 
adored, whose death was mourned, and left in the 
heart an inconsolable grief. I have known goats, 
cows, and asses of very great importance, and 
whose personality played such a part that their 
history ought to be written. And there is our Bon- 
homme, our poor old horse, that has served us for 
a quarter of a century. Do you not think that he 
has mingled his life with ours, and that henceforth 
he is one of the family? We have modified him, as 
he has influenced us a little; we shall end by being 
made in the same image, and this is so true that 
now, when I see him, half blind, with wandering 
gaze, his legs stiff with rheumatism, I kiss him on 
both cheeks as if he were a poor old relation who 


1 66 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


had fallen to my charge. Ah, animals, all creeping 
and crawling things, all creatures that lament, 
below man, how large a place in our sympathies 
it would be necessary to give them in a history of 
life!” 

This was a last cry in which Pascal gave utterance 
to his passionate tenderness for all created beings. 
He had gradually become more and more excited, 
and had so come to make this confession of his 
faith in the continuous and victorious work of ani- 
mated nature. And Clotilde, who thus far had not 
spoken, pale from the catastrophe in which her 
plans had ended, at last opened her lips to ask: 

“Well, master, and what am I here?” 

She placed one of her slender fingers on the leaf 
of the tree on which she saw her name written. 
He had always passed this leaf by. She insisted. 

"Yes, I; what am I? Why have you not read 
me my envelope?” 

For a moment he remained silent, as if surprised 
at the question. 

"Why? P"or no reason. It is true, I have noth- 
ing to conceal from you. You see what is written 
here? ‘Clotilde, born in 1847. Selection of the 
mother. Reversional heredity, with moral and 
physical predominance of the maternal grandfather.’ 
Nothing can be clearer. Your mother has pre- 
dominated in you ; you have her fine intelligence, 
and you have also something of her coquetry, at 
times of her indolence and of her submissiveness. 
Yes, you are very feminine, like her. Without 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


167 

your being aware of it, I would say that you love 
to be loved. Besides, your mother was a great 
novel reader, an imaginative being who loved to 
spend whole days dreaming over a book; she doted 
on nursery tales, had her fortune told by cards, 
consulted clairvoyants; and I have always thought 
that your concern about spiritual matters, your 
anxiety about the unknown, came from that source. 
But what completed your character, by giving you 
a dual nature, was the influence of your grandfather, 
Commandant Sicardot. I knew him; he was not a 
genius, but he had at least a great deal of upright- 
ness and energy. Frankly, if it were not for him, I 
do not believe that you would be worth much, for 
the other influences are hardly good. He has given 
you the best part of your nature, combativeness, 
pride, and frankness.” 

She had listened to him with attention. She 
nodded slightly, to signify that it was indeed so, 
that she was not offended, although her lips 
trembled visibly at these new details regarding her 
people and her mother. 

'‘Well,” she resumed, “and you, master?” 

This time he did not hesitate. 

“Oh, I !” he cried, “what is the use of speaking 
of me? I do not belong to the family. You see 
what is written here. ‘Pascal, born in 1813. Indi- 
vidual variation. Combination in which the physi- 
cal and moral characters of the parents are blended, 
without any of their traits seeming to appear in the 
new being.’ My mother has told me often enough 


i68 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


that I did not belong to it, that in truth she did 
not know where I could have come from.” 

These words came from him like a cry of relief, 
of involuntary joy. 

“And the people make no mistake i*n the matter. 
Have you ever heard me called Pascal Rougon in 
the town? No; people always say simply Dr. Pas- 
cal. It is because I stand apart. And it may not 
be very affectionate to feel so, but I am delighted 
at it, for there are in truth inheritances too heavy 
to bear. It is of no use that I love them all. My 
heart beats none the less joyously when I feel my- 
self another being, different from them, without any 
community with them. Not to be of them, my 
God ! not to be of them ! It is a breath of pure air; 
it is what gives me the courage to have them all 
here, to put them, in all their nakedness, in their 
envelopes, and still to find the courage to live !” 

He stopped, and there was silence for a time. 
The rain had ceased, the storm was passing away, 
the thunderclaps sounded more and more distant, 
while from the refreshed fields, still dark, there came 
in through the open window a delicious odor of 
moist earth. In the calm air the candles were burn- 
ing out with a tall, tranquil flame. 

“Ah!” said Clotilde simply, with a gesture of dis- 
couragement, “what are we to become finally?” 

She had declared it herself one night, in the 
threshing yard; life was horrible, how could one 
live peaceful and happy? It was a terrible light 
that science threw on the world. Analysis searched 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


169 


every wound of humanity, in order to expose its 
horror. And now he had spoken still more bluntly ; 
he had increased the disgust which she had for 
persons and things, pitilessly dissecting her family. 
The muddy torrent had rolled on before her for 
nearly three hours, and she had heard the most 
dreadful revelations, the harsh and terrible truth 
about her people, her people who were so dear to 
her, whom it was her duty to love ; her father grown 
powerful through pecuniary crimes; her brother dis- 
solute ; her grandmother unscrupulous, covered with 
the blood of the just; the others almost all tainted, 
drunkards, ruffians, murderers, the monstrous blos- 
soming of the human tree. 

The blow had been so rude that she could not 
yet recover from it, stunned as she was by the rev- 
elation of her whole family history, made to her in 
this way at a stroke. And yet the lesson was ren- 
dered innocuous, so to say, by something great and 
good, a breath of profound humanity which had 
borne her through it. Nothing bad had come to 
her from it. She had felt herself beaten by a sharp 
sea wind, the storm wind which strengthens and 
expands the lungs. He had revealed everything, 
speaking freely even of his mother, without judging 
her, continuing to preserve toward her his deferen- 
tial attitude, as a scientist who does not judge events. 
To tell everything in order to know everything, in 
order to remedy everything, was not this the cry 
which he had uttered on that beautiful summer 
night? 


1 7 ° 


DOCTOR PASCAL . 


And by the very excess of what he had just re- 
vealed to her, she remained shaken, blinded by this 
too strong light, but understanding him at last, and 
confessing to herself that he was attempting in this 
an immense work. In spite of everything, it was a 
cry of health, of hope in the future. He spoke as a 
benefactor who, since heredity made the world, 
wished to fix its laws, in order to control it, and to 
make a new and happy world. Was there then 
only mud in this overflowing stream, whose sluices 
he had opened? How much gold had passed, 
mingled with the grass and the flowers on its 
borders? Hundreds of beings were still flying 
swiftly before her, and she was haunted by good 
and charming faces, delicate girlish profiles, by the 
serene beauty of women. All passion bled there, 
hearts swelled with every tender rapture. They 
were numerous, the Jeannes, the Angeliques, the 
Paulines, the Marthes, the Gervaises, the Helenes. 
They and others, even those who were least gocd, 
even terrible men, the worst of the band, showed a 
brotherhood with humanity. 

And it was precisely this breath which she had 
felt pass, this broad current of sympathy, that he 
had introduced naturally into his exact scientific les- 
son. He did not seem to be moved ; he preserved 
the impersonal and correct attitude of the demon- 
strator, but within him what tender suffering, what 
a fever of devotion, what a giving up of his whole 
being to the happiness of others? His entire 
work, constructed with such mathematical pre- 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


I/I 


cision, was steeped in this fraternal suffering, even 
in its most cruel ironies. Had he not just spoken 
of the animals, like an elder brother of the 
wretched living beings that suffer? Suffering exas- 
perated him ; his wrath was because of his too lofty 
dream, and he had become harsh only in his hatred 
of the factitious and the transitory; dreaming of 
working, not for the polite society of a time, but for 
all humanity in the gravest hours of its history. 
Perhaps, even, it was this revolt against the vulgar- 
ity of the time which had made him throw himself, 
in bold defiance, into theories and their application. 
And the work remained human, overflowing as it 
was with an infinite pity for beings and things. 

Besides, was it not life? There is no absolute 
evil. Most often a virtue presents itself side by side 
with a defect. No man is bad to everyone, each 
man makes the happiness of someone; so that, 
when one does not view things from a single stand- 
point only, one recognizes in the end the utility of 
every human being. Those who believe in God 
should say to themselves that if their God does not 
strike the wicked dead, it is because he sees his 
work in its totality, and that he cannot descend to 
the individual. Labor ends to begin anew; the 
living, as a whole, continue, in spite of everything, 
admirable in their courage and their industry; and 
love of life prevails over all. 

This giant labor of men, this obstinacy in living, 
is their excuse, is redemption. And then, from a 
great height the eye saw only this continual strug- 


172 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


gle, and a great deal of good, in spite of everything, 
even though there might be a great deal of evil. 
One shared the general indulgence, one pardoned, 
one had only an infinite pity and an ardent charity. 
The haven was surely there, waiting those who have 
lost faith in dogmas, who wish to understand the 
meaning of their lives, in the midst of the apparent 
iniquity of the world. One must live for the effort 
of living, for the stone to be carried to the distant 
and unknown work, and the only possible peace in 
this world is in the joy of making this effort. 

Another hour passed; the entire night had flown 
by in this terrible lesson of life, without either Pas- 
cal or Clotilde being conscious of where they were, 
or of the flight of time. And he, overworked for 
some time past, and worn out by the life of suspi- 
cion and sadness which he had been leading, started 
nervously, as if he had suddenly awakened. 

“Come, you know all ; do you feel your heart 
strong, tempered by the truth, full of pardon and 
of hope? Are you with me?” 

But, still stunned by the frightful moral shock 
which she had received, she, too, started, bewil- 
dered. Her old beliefs had been so completely 
overthrown, so many new ideas were awakening 
within her, that she did not dare to question herself, 
in order to find an answer. She felt herself seized 
and carried away by the omnipotence of truth. 
She endured it without being convinced. 

“Master,” she stammered, “master ” 

And they remained for a moment face to face, 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


173 


looking at each other. Day was breaking, a dawn 
of exquisite purity, far off in the vast, clear sky, 
washed by the storm. Not a cloud now stained the 
pale azure tinged with rose color. All the cheerful 
sounds of awakening life in the rain-drenched fields 
came in through the window, while the candles, 
burned down to the socket, paled in the growing 
light. 

“Answer; are you with me, altogether with me?” 

For a moment he thought she was going to throw 
lu: self on his neck and burst into tears. A sudden 
impulse seemed to impel her. But they saw each 
other in their semi-nudity. She, who had not 
noticed it before, was now conscious that she was 
only half dressed, that her arms were bare, her shoul- 
ders bare, covered only by the scattered locks of her 
unbound hair, and on her right shoulder, near the 
armpit, on lowering her eyes, she perceived again 
the few drops of blood of the bruise which he had 
given her, when he had grasped her roughly, in 
struggling to master her. Then an extraordinary 
confusion took possession of her, a certainty that 
she was going to be vanquished, as if by this grasp 
he had become her master, and forever. This sen- 
sation was prolonged ; she was seized and drawn on, 
without the consent of her will, by an irresistible 
impulse to submit. 

Abruptly Clotilde straightened herself, struggling 
with herself, wishing to reflect and to recover her- 
self. She pressed her bare arms against her naked 
throat. All the blood in her body rushed to her 


174 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


skin in a rosy blush of shame. Then, in her divine 
and slender grace, she turned to flee. 

“Master, master, let me go — I will see “ 

With the swiftness of alarmed maidenhood, she 
took refuge in her chamber, as she had done once 
before. He heard her lock the door hastily, with a 
double turn of the key. He remained alone, and 
he asked himself suddenly, seized by infinite dis- 
couragement and sadness, if he had done right in 
speaking, if the truth would germinate in this dear 
and adored creature, and bear one day a harvest of 
happiness. 


VI. 


The days wore on. October began with magnifi- 
cent weather — a sultry autumn in which the fervid 
heat of summer was prolonged, with a cloudless 
sky. Then the weather changed, fierce winds began 
to blow, and a last storm channeled gullies in the 
hillsides. And to the melancholy household at La 
Souleiade the approach of winter seemed to have 
brought an infinite sadness. 

It was a new hell. There were no more violent 
quarrels between Pascal and Clotilde. The doors 
were no longer slammed. Voices raised in dispute 
no longer obliged Martine to go continually upstairs 
to listen outside the door. They scarcely spoke to 
each other now ; and not a single word had been 
exchanged between them regarding the midnight 
scene, although weeks had passed since it had taken 
place. He, through an inexplicable scruple, a 
strange delicacy of which he was not himself con- 
scious, did not wish to renew the conversation, and 
to demand the answer which he expected — a prom- 
ise of faith in him and of submission. She, after 
the great moral shock which had completely trans- 
formed her, still reflected, hesitated, struggled, 
fighting against herself, putting off her decision in 
order not to surrender, in her instinctive rebellious- 


175 


176 


DOCTOR PASCAL . 


ness. And the misunderstanding continued, in the 
midst of the mournful silence of the miserable 
house, where there was no longer any happiness. 

During all this time Pascal suffered terribly, with- 
out making any complaint. He had sunk into a 
dull distrust, imagining that he was still being 
watched, and that if they seemed to leave him at 
peace it was only in order to concoct in secret the 
darkest plots. His uneasiness increased, even, and 
he expected every day some catastrophe to happen 
— the earth suddenly to open and swallow up his 
papers, La Souleiade itself to be razed to the 
ground, carried away bodily, scattered to the winds. 

The persecution against his thought, against his 
moral and intellectual life, in thus hiding itself, and 
so rendering him helpless to defend himself, became 
so intolerable to him that he went to bed every 
night in a fever. He would often start and turn 
round suddenly, thinking he was going to surprise 
the enemy behind him engaged in some piece of 
treachery, to find nothing there but the shadow of 
his own fears. At other times, seized by some 
suspicion, he would remain on the watch for hours 
together, hidden behind his blinds, or lying in wait 
in a passage; but not a soul stirred, he heard noth- 
ing but the violent beating of his heart. His fears 
kept him in a state of constant agitation; he never 
went to bed at night without visiting every room; 
he no longer slept, or, if he did, he would waken 
with a start at the slightest noise, ready to defend 
himself. 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


177 


And what still further aggravated Pascal’s suffer- 
ings was the constant, the ever more bitter thought 
that the wound was inflicted upon him by the only 
creature he loved in the world, the adored Clotilde, 
whom for twenty years he had seen grow in beauty 
and in grace, whose life had hitherto bloomed like a 
beautiful flower, perfuming his. She, great God! 
for whom his heart was full of affection, whom he 
had never analyzed, she, who had become his joy, 
his courage, his hope, in whose young life he lived 
over again. When she passed by, with her delicate 
neck, so round, so fresh, he was invigorated, bathed 
in health and joy, as at the coming of spring. 

His whole life, besides, explained this invasion, 
this subjugation of his being by the young girl who 
had entered into his heart while she was still a little 
child, and who, as she grew up, had gradually taken 
possession of the whole place. Since he had 
settled at Plassans, he had led a blest existence, 
wrapped up in his books', far from women. The 
only passion he was ever known to have had, was 
his love for the lady who had died, whose finger 
tips he had never kissed. He had not lived ; he had 
within him a reserve of youthfulness, of vigor, 
whose surging flood now clamored rebelliously at 
the menace of approaching age. He would have 
become attached to an animal, a stray dog that he 
had chanced to pick up in the street, and that had 
licked his hand. And it was this child whom he 
loved, all at once become an adorable woman, who 
now distracted him, who tortured him by her hostility. 


178 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


Pascal, so gay, so kind, now became insupport- 
ably gloomy and harsh. He grew angry at the 
slightest word ; he would push aside the astonished 
Martine, who would look up at him with the sub- 
missive eyes of a beaten animal. From morning 
till night he went about the gloomy house, carrying 
his misery about with him, with so forbidding a 
countenance that no one ventured to speak to him. 

He never took Clotilde with him now on his visits, 
but went alone. And thus it was that he returned 
home one afternoon, his mind distracted because of 
an accident which had happened ; having on his 
conscience, as a physician, the death of a man. 

He had gone to give a hypodermic injection to 
Lafouasse, the tavern keeper, whose ataxia had 
within a short time made such rapid progress that 
he regarded him as doomed. But, notwithstanding, 
Pascal still fought obstinately against the disease, 
continuing the treatment, and as ill luck would have 
it, on this day the little syringe had caught up at the 
bottom of the vial an impure particle, which had 
escaped the filter. Immediately a drop of blood 
appeared; to complete his misfortune, he had 
punctured a vein. He was at once alarmed, seeing 
the tavern keeper turn pale and gasp for breath, 
while large drops of cold perspiration broke out 
upon his face. Then he understood ; death came 
as if by a stroke of lightning, the lips turning blue, 
the face black. It was an embolism ; he had nothing 
to blame but the insufficiency of his preparations, 
his still rude method. No doubt Lafouasse had 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


179 


been doomed. He could not, perhaps, have lived six 
months longer, and that in the midst of atrocious 
sufferings, but the brutal fact of this terrible death 
was none the less there, and what despairing regret, 
what rage against impotent and murderous science, 
and what a shock to his faith ! He returned home, 
livid, and did not make his appearance again until 
the following day, after having remained sixteen 
hours shut up in his room, lying in a semi-stupor 
on the bed, across which he had thrown himself, 
dressed as he was. 

On the afternoon of this day Clotilde, who was 
sitting beside him in the study, sewing, ventured to 
break the oppressive silence. She looked up, and 
saw him turning over the leaves of a book wearily, 
searching for some information which he was unable 
to find. 

“Master, are you ill? Why do you not tell me, if 
you are. I would take care of you.” 

He kept his eyes bent upon the book, and mut- 
tered : 

“What does it matter to you whether I am ill or 
not? I need no one to take care of me.” 

She resumed, in a conciliating voice : 

“If you have troubles, and can tell them to me, it 
would perhaps be a relief to you to do so. Yester- 
day you came in looking so sad. You must not 
allow yourself to be cast down in that way. I have 
spent a very anxious night. I came to your door 
three times to listen, tormented by the idea that 
you were suffering.” 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


180 

Gently as she spoke, her words were like the cut 
of a whip. In his weak and nervous condition a 
sudden access of rage made him push away the 
book, and rise up trembling. 

“So you spy upon me, then. I cannot even retire 
to my room without people coming to glue their 
ears to the walls. Yes, you listen even to the beat- 
ings of my heart. You watch for my death, to pil- 
lage and burn everything here.” 

His voice rose, and all his unjust suffering vented 
itself in complaints and threats. 

“I forbid you to occupy yourself about me. Is 
there nothing else that you have to say to me? 
Have you reflected ? Can you put your hand in mine 
loyally, and say to me that we are in accord?” 

She did not answer. She only continued to look 
at him with her large clear eyes, frankly declaring 
that she would not surrender yet, while he, exasper- 
ated more and more by this attitude, lost all self- 
control. 

“Go away, go away,” he stammered, pointing to 
the door. “I do not wish you to remain near me. 
I do not wish to have enemies near me. I do not 
wish you to remain near me to drive me mad ! ” 

She rose, very pale, and went at once out of the 
room, without looking behind, carrying her work 
with her. 

During the month which followed, Pascal took 
refuge in furious and incessant work. He now 
remained obstinately, for whole days at a time, 
alone in the study, sometimes passing even the 


doctor Rascal. 


nights there, going over old documents, to revise 
all his works on heredity. It seemed as if a sort of 
frenzy had seized him to assure himself of the legit- 
imacy of his hopes, to force science to give him the 
certainty that humanity could be remade — made a 
higher, a healthy humanity. He no longer left the 
house, he abandoned his patients even, and lived 
among his papers, without air or exercise. And 
after a month of this overwork, which exhausted 
him without appeasing his domestic torments, he 
fell into such a state of nervous exhaustion that 
illness, for some time latent, declared itself at last 
with alarming violence. 

Pascal, when he rose in the morning, felt worn 
out with fatigue, wearier and less refreshed than 
he had been on going to bed the night before. 
He constantly had pains all over his body; his 
limbs failed him, after five minutes’ walk; the 
slightest exertion tired him; the least movement 
caused him intense pain. At times the floor seemed 
suddenly to sway beneath his feet. He had a con- 
stant buzzing in his ears, flashes of light dazzled his 
eyes. He took a loathing for wine, he had no 
longer any appetite, and his digestion was seriously 
impaired. Then, in the midst of the apathy of his 
constantly increasing idleness he would have sud- 
den fits of aimless activity. The equilibrium was 
destroyed, he had at times outbreaks of nervous 
irritability, without any cause. The slightest emo- 
tion brought tears to his eyes. Finally, he would 
shut himself up in his room, and give way to 


182 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


paroxysms of despair so violent that he would sch 
for hours at a time, without any immediate cause 
of grief, overwhelmed simply by the immense sad- 
ness of things. 

In the early part of December Pascal had a severe 
attack of neuralgia. Violent pains in the bones of 
the skull made him feel at times as if his head must 
split. Old Mme. Rougon, who had been informed 
of his illness, came to inquire after her son. But 
she went straight to the kitchen, wishing to have a 
talk with Martine first. The latter, with a heart- 
broken and terrified air, said to her that monsieur 
must certainly be going mad ; and she told her of 
his singular behavior, the continual tramping about 
in his room, the locking of all the drawers, the 
rounds which he made from the top to the bottom 
of the house, until two o’clock in the morning. 
Tears filled her eyes and she at last hazarded the 
opinion that monsieur must be possessed with a 
devil, and that it would be well to notify the cur£ 
of St. Saturnin. 

“So good a man,” she said, “a man for whom one 
would let one’s self be cut in pieces! How unfor- 
tunate it is that one cannot get him to go to church, 
for that would certainly cure him at once.” 

Clotilde, who had heard her grandmother’s voice, 
entered at this moment. She, too, wandered 
through the empty rooms, spending most of her 
time in the deserted apartment on the ground floor. 
She did not speak, however, but only listened with 
her thoughtful and expectant air. 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


S 3 


“Ah, good-day! It is you, my dear. Martine 
tells me that Pascal is possessed with a devil. That 
is indeed my opinion also; only the devil is called 
pride. He thinks that he knows everything. He is 
Pope and Emperor in one, and naturally it exasper- 
ates him when people don’t agree with him.” 

She shrugged her shoulders with supreme disdain. 

“As for me, all that would only make me laugh 
if it were not so sad. A fellow who knows noth- 
ing about anything; who has always been wrapped 
up in his books; who has not lived. Put him 
in a drawing room, and he would know as little 
how to act as a new-born babe. And as for women, 
he does not even know what they are.” 

Forgetting to whom she was speaking, a young 
girl and a servant, she lowered her voice, and said 
confidentially : 

“Well, one pays for being too sensible, too. 
Neither a wife nor a sweetheart nor anything. 
That is what has finally turned his brain.” 

Clotilde did not move. She only lowered her 
eyelids slowly over her large thoughtful eyes; then 
she raised them again, maintaining her impenetrable 
countenance, unwilling, unable, perhaps, to give 
expression to what was passing within her. This 
was no doubt all still confused, a complete evolu- 
tion, a great change which was taking place, and 
which she herself did not clearly understand. 

“He is upstairs, is he not?” resumed Felicity. “I 
have come to see him, for this must end; it is too 
stupid.” 


184 


DOCTOk PASCAL. 


And she went upstairs, while Martine returned to 
her saucepans, and Clotilde went to wander again 
through the empty house. 

Upstairs in the study Pascal sat seemingly in a 
stupor, his face bent over a large open book. He 
could no longer read, the words danced before his 
eyes, conveying no meaning to his mind. But he 
persisted, for it was death to him to lose his 
faculty for work, hitherto so powerful. His mother 
at once began to scold him, snatching the book 
from him, and flinging it upon a distant table, cry- 
ing that when one was sick one should take care 
of one’s self. He rose with a quick, angry move- 
ment, about to order her away as he had ordered 
Clotilde. Then, by a last effort of the will, he 
became again deferential. 

“Mother, you know that I have never wished to 
dispute with you. Leave me, I beg of you.” 

She did not heed him, but began instead to take 
him to task about his continual distrust. It was 
he himself who had given himself a fever, always 
fancying that he was surrounded by enemies who 
were setting traps for him, and watching him to rob 
him. Was there any common sense in imagining 
that people were persecuting him in that way? 
And then she accused him of allowing his head to 
be turned by his discovery, his famous remedy for 
curing every disease. That was as much as to think 
himself equal to the good God ; which only made it 
all the more cruel when he found out how mistaken 
he was. And she mentioned Lafouasse, the man 


Doctor pascal. 


whom he had killed — naturally, she could under- 
stand that that had not been very pleasant for him; 
indeed there was cause enough in it to make him 
take to his bed. 

Pascal, still controlling himself, very pale and 
with eyes cast on the ground, contented himself 
with repeating: 

‘‘Mother, leave me, I beg of you.” 

“No, I won’t leave you,” she cried with the im- 
petuosity which was natural to her, and which her 
great age had in no wise diminished. ‘‘I have come 
precisely to stir you up a little, to rid you of this 
fever which is consuming you. No, this cannot 
continue. I don’t wish that we should again become 
the talk of the whole town on your account. I 
wish you to take care of yourself.” 

He shrugged his shoulders, and said in a low 
voice, as if speaking to himself, with an uneasy 
look, half of conviction, half of doubt: 

“I am not ill.” 

But Fdlicite, beside herself, burst out, gesticu- 
lating violently : 

“Not ill! not ill! Truly, there is no one like a 
physician for not being able to see himself. Why, 
my poor boy, everyone that comes near you is 
shocked by your appearance. You are becoming 
insane through pride and fear!” 

This time Pascal raised his head quickly, and 
looked her straight in the eyes, while she continued : 

‘‘This is what I had to tell you, since it seems 
that no one else would undertake the task. You 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


1 86 

are old enough to know what you ought to do. 
You should make an effort to shake off all this; 
you should think of something else ; you should not 
let a fixed idea take possession of you, especially 
when you belong to a family like ours. You know 
it; have sense, and take care of yourself.” 

He grew paler than before, looking fixedly at her 
still, as if he were sounding her, to know what there 
was of her in him. And he contented himself with 
answering : 

“You are right, mother. I thank you.” 

When he was again alone, he dropped into his 
seat before the table, and tried once more to read 
his book. But he could not succeed, any more 
than before, in fixing his attention sufficiently to 
understand the words, whose letters mingled con- 
fusedly together before his eyes. And his mother’s 
words buzzed in his ears; a vague terror, which had 
some time before sprung up within him, grew and 
took shape, haunting him now as an immediate and 
clearly defined danger. He who two months before 
had boasted triumphantly of not belonging to the 
family, was he about to receive the most terrible of 
contradictions? Ah, this egotistic joy, this intense 
joy of not belonging to it, was it to give place to 
the terrible anguish of being struck in his turn? 
Was he to have the humiliation of seeing the taint 
revive in him? Was he to be dragged down to the 
horror of feeling himself in the clutches of the mon- 
ster of heredity? The sublime idea, the lofty certi- 
tude which he had of abolishing suffering, of 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


i8 7 


strengthening man’s will, of making a new and a 
higher humanity, a healthy humanity, was assur- 
edly only the beginning of the monomania of van- 
ity. And in his bitter complaint of being watched, 
in his desire to watch the enemies who, he thought, 
were obstinately bent on his destruction, were easily 
to be recognized the symptoms of the monomania 
of suspicion. So then all the diseases of the race 
were to end in this terrible case — madness within a 
brief space, then general paralysis, and a dreadful 
death. 

From this day forth Pascal was as if possessed. 
The state of nervous exhaustion into which over- 
work and anxiety had thrown him left him an 
unresisting prey to this haunting fear of madness 
and death. All the morbid sensations which he 
felt, his excessive fatigue on rising, the buzzing in 
his ears, the flashes of light before his eyes, even his 
attacks of indigestion and his paroxysms of tears, 
were so many infallible symptoms of the near insan- 
ity with which he believed himself threatened. He 
had completely lost, in his own case, the keen 
power of diagnosis of the observant physician, and 
if he still continued to reason about it, it was only 
to confound and pervert symptoms, under the influ- 
ence of the moral and physical depression into 
which he had fallen. He was no longer master of 
himself; he was mad, so to say, to convince himself 
hour by hour that he must become so. 

All the days of this pale December were spent by 
him in going deeper and deeper into his malady. 


i88 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


Every morning he tried to escape from the haunt- 
ing subject, but he invariably ended by shutting 
himself in the study to take up again, in spite of 
himself, the tangled skein of the day before. 

The long study which he had made of heredity, 
his important researches, his works, completed the 
poisoning of his peace, furnishing him with ever 
renewed causes of disquietude. To the question 
which he put to himself continually as to his own 
hereditary case, the documents were there to answer 
it by all possible combinations. They were so 
numerous that he lost himself among them now. 
If he had deceived himself, if he could not set him- 
self apart, as a remarkable case of variation, should 
he place himself under the head of reversional 
heredity, passing over one, two, or even three gen- 
erations? Or was his case rather a manifestation of 
larvated heredity, which would bring a new proof to 
the support of his theory of the germ plasm, or was 
it simply a singular case of hereditary resemblance, 
the sudden apparition of some unknown ancestor 
at the very decline of life? 

From this moment he never rested, giving him- 
self up completely to the investigation of his 
case, searching his notes, rereading his books. 
And he studied himself, watching the least of his 
sensations, to deduce from them the facts on 
which he might judge himself. On the days when 
his mind was most sluggish, or when he thought 
he experienced particular phenomena of vision, he 
inclined to a predominance of the original nervous 


DOCTOR RASCAL . 189 

lesion; while, if he felt that his limbs were affected, 
his feet heavy and painful, he imagined he was 
suffering the indirect influence of some ancestor 
come from outside. Everything became confused, 
until at last he could recognize himself no longer, 
in the midst of the imaginary troubles which 
agitated his disturbed organism. And every even- 
ing the conclusion was the same, the same knell 
sounded in his brain — heredity, appalling heredity, 
the fear of becoming mad. 

In the early part of January Clotilde was an 
involuntary spectator of a scene which wrung her 
heart. She was sitting before one of the windows 
of the study, reading, concealed by the high back 
of her chair, when she saw Pascal, who had been 
shut up in his room since the day before, entering. 
He held open before his eyes with both hands a 
sheet of yellow paper, in which she recognized the 
genealogical tree. He was so completely absorbed, 
his gaze was so fixed, that she might have come 
forward without his observing her. He spread the 
tree upon the table, continuing to look at it for a 
long time, with the terrified expression of interroga- 
tion which had become habitual to him, which grad- 
ually changed to one of supplication, the tears 
coursing down his cheeks. 

Why, great God! would not the tree answer him, 
and tell him what ancestor he resembled, in order 
that he might inscribe his case on his own leaf, 
beside the others? If he was to become mad, why 
did not the tree tell him so clearly, which would 


190 DOCTOR PASCAL. 

have calmed him, for he believed that his suffering 
came only from his uncertainty? Tears clouded his 
vision, yet still he looked, he exhausted himself in 
this longing to know, in which his reason must 
finally give way. 

Clotilde hastily concealed herself as she saw him 
walk over to the press, which he opened wide. He 
seized the envelopes, threw them on the table, and 
searched among them feverishly. It was the scene 
of the terrible night of the storm that was begin- 
ning over again, the gallop of nightmares, the pro- 
cession of phantoms, rising at his call from this 
heap of old papers. As they passed by, he ad- 
di essed to each of them a question, an ardent 
p/ayer, demanding the origin of his malady, hoping 
for a word, a whisper which should set his doubts 
kt rest. First, it was only an indistinct murmur, 
then came words and fragments of phrases. 

“Is it you — is it you — is it you — oh, old mother, 
the mother of us all — who are to give me your mad- 
ness? Is it you, inebriate uncle, old scoundrel of 
an uncle, whose drunkenness I am to pay for? Is it 
you, ataxic nephew, or you, mystic nephew, or yet 
you, idiot niece, who are to reveal to me the truth, 
showing me one of the forms of the lesion from 
which I suffer. Or is it rather you, second cousin 
who hanged yourself; or you, second cousin who 
committed murder; or you, second cousin, who died 
of rottenness, whose tragic ends announce to me 
mine — death in a cell, the horrible decomposition 
of being.” 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


191 


And the gallop continued, they rose and passed 
by with the speed of the wind. The papers became 
animate, incarnate, they jostled one another, they 
trampled on one another, in a wild rush of suffering 
humanity. 

“Ah, who will tell me, who will tell me, who will 
tell me? — Is it he who died mad? he who was car- 
ried off by phthisis? he who was killed by paralysis? 
she whose constitutional feebleness caused her to 
die in early youth? — Whose is the poison of which 
I am to die? What is it, hysteria, alcoholism, 
tuberculosis, scrofula? And what is it going to 
make of me, an ataxic or a madman? — A madman. 
Who was it said a madman? They all say it — a 
madman, a madman, a madman!” 

Sobs choked Pascal. He let his dejected head 
fall among the papers, he wept endlessly, shaken by 
shuddering sobs. And Clotilde, seized by a sort of 
awe, feeling the presence of the fate which rules over 
races, left the room softly, holding her breath ; for 
she knew that it would mortify him exceedingly if 
he knew that she had been present. 

Long periods of prostration followed. January 
was very cold. But the sky remained wonderfully 
clear, a brilliant sun shone in the limpid blue; and at 
La Souleiade, the windows of the study, facing 
south, formed a sort of hothouse, preserving there 
a delightfully mild temperature. They did not 
even light a fire, for the room was always filled with 
a flood of sunshine, in which the flies that had sur- 
vived the winter flew about lazily. The only sound 


192 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


to be heard was the buzzing of their wings. It was 
a close and drowsy warmth, like a breath of spring 
that had lingered in the old house baked by the 
heat of summer. 

Pascal, still gloomy, dragged through the days 
there, and it was there, too, that he overheard one 
day the closing words of a conversation which aggra- 
vated his suffering. As he never left his room now 
before breakfast, Clotilde had received Dr. Ramond 
this morning in the study, and they were talking 
there together in an undertone, sitting beside each 
other in the bright sunshine. 

It was the third visit which Ramond had made, 
during the last week. Personal reasons, the neces- 
sity, especially, of establishing definitely his position 
as a physician at Plassans, made it expedient for 
him not to defer his marriage much longer; and he 
wished to obtain from Clotilde a decisive answer. 
On each of his former visits the presence of a third 
person had prevented him from speaking. As he 
desired to receive her answer from herself directly, 
he had resolved to declare himself to her in a frank 
conversation. Their intimate friendship, and the 
discretion and good sense of both, justified him in 
taking this step. And he ended, smiling, looking 
into her eyes : 

“I assure you, Clotilde, that it is the most reason- 
able of denouements. You know that I have loved 
you for a long time. I have a profound affection 
and esteem for you. That alone might perhaps not 
be sufficient, but, in addition, we understand each 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


193 


other perfectly,- and we should be very happy 
together, I am convinced of it.” 

She did not cast down her eyes; she, too, looked 
at him frankly, with a friendly smile. He was, in 
truth, very handsome, in his vigorous young man- 
hood. 

“Why do you not marry Mile. L6veque, the law- 
yer’s daughter?” she asked. “She is prettier and 
richer than I am, and I know that she would gladly 
accept you. My dear friend, I fear that you are 
committing a folly in choosing me.” 

He did not grow impatient, seeming still con- 
vinced of the wisdom of his determination. 

“But I do not love Mile. Leveque, and I do 
love you. Besides, I have considered everything, 
and I repeat that I know very well what I 
am about. Say yes; you can take no better 
course.” 

Then she grew very serious, and a shadow passed 
over her face, the shadow of those reflections, of 
those almost unconscious inward struggles, which 
kept her silent for days at a time. She did not see 
clearly yet, she still struggled against herself, and 
she wished to wait. 

“Well, my friend, since you are really serious, do 
not ask me to give you an answer to-day ; grant me 
a few weeks longer. Master is indeed very ill. I am 
greatly troubled about him ; and you would not like 
to owe my consent to a hasty impulse. I assure you, 
for my part, that I have a great deal of affection for 
you, but it would be wrong to decide at this 


194 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


moment ; the house is too unhappy. It is agreed ; 
is it not? I will not make you wait long.” 

And to change the conversation she added : 

“Yes, I am uneasy about master. I wished to 
see you, in order to tell you so. The other day I 
surprised him weeping violently, and I am certain 
the fear of becoming mad haunts him. The day be- 
fore yesterday, when you were talking to him, I saw 
that you were examining him. Tell me frankly, what 
do you think of his condition ? Is he in any danger?” 

“Not the slightest!” exclaimed Dr. Ramond. 
“His system is a little out of order, that is all. 
How can a man of his ability, who has made so 
close a study of nervous diseases, deceive himself 
to such an extent? It is discouraging, indeed, if 
the clearest and most vigorous minds can go so far 
astray. In his case his own discovery of hypoder- 
mic injections would be excellent. Why does he 
not use them with himself?” 

And as the young girl replied, with a despairing 
gesture, that he would not listen to her, that he 
would not even allow her to speak to him now, 
Ramond said : 

“Well, then, I will speak to him.” 

It was at this moment that Pascal came out of 
his room, attracted by the sound of voices. But on 
seeing them both so close to each other, so ani- 
mated, so youthful, and so handsome in the sun- 
shine — clothed with sunshine, as it were — he stood 
still in the doorway. He looked fixedly at them, 
and his pale face altered. 


DOCTOR PASCAL . 195 

Ramond had a moment before taken Clotilde’s 
hand, and he was holding it in his. 

“It is a promise, is it not? I should like the 
marriage to take place this summer. You know 
how much I love you, and I shall eagerly await 
your answer.” 

“Very well,” she answered. “Before a month all 
will be settled.” 

A sudden giddiness made Pascal stagger. Here 
now was this boy, his friend, his pupil, who had 
introduced himself into his house to rob him of his 
treasure! He ought to have expected this denoue- 
ment, yet the sudden news of a possible marriage 
surprised him, overwhelmed him like an unforeseen 
catastrophe, that had forever ruined his life. This 
girl whom he had fashioned, whom he had believed 
his own, she would leave him, then, without regret, 
she would leave him to die alone in his solitude. 
Only the day before she had made him suffer so 
intensely that he had asked himself whether he 
should not part from her, and send her to her 
brother, who was always writing for her. For an 
instant he had even decided on this separation, for 
the good of both. Yet to find her here suddenly, 
with this man, to hear her promise to give him an 
answer, to think that she would marry, that she 
would soon leave him, this stabbed him to the 
heart. 

At the sound of his heavy step as he came for- 
ward, the two young people turned round in some 
embarrassment. 


196 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


“Why, master, we were just talking about you,’’ 
said Ramond gayly. “Yes, to be frank with yoft, 
we were conspiring. Come, why do you not take 
care of yourself? There is nothing serious the mat- 
ter with you ; you would be on your feet again in a 
fortnight if you did.” 

Pascal, who had dropped into a chair, continued 
to look at them. He had still the power to control 
himself, and his countenance gave no evidence of 
the wound which he had just received. He would 
assuredly die of it, and no one would suspect the 
malady which had carried him off. But it was a 
relief to him to be able to give vent to his feelings, 
and he declared violently that he would not take 
even so much as a glass of tisane. 

“Take care of myself!” he cried; “what for? Is 
it not all over with my old carcass?” 

Ramond insisted, with a good-tempered smile. 

“You are sounder than any of us. This is a 
trifling disturbance, and you know that you have 
the remedy in your own hands. Use your hypo- 
dermic injection.” 

Pascal did not allow him to finish. This filled 
the measure of his rage. He angrily asked if they 
wished him to kill himself, as he had killed La- 
fouasse. His injections! A pretty invention, of 
which he had good reason to be proud. He abjured 
medicine, and he swore that he would never again 
go near a patient. When people were no longer 
good for anything they ought to die; that would 
be the best thing for everybody. And that was 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


97 


what he was going to try to do, so as to have done 
with it all. 

“Bah ! bah !” said Ramond at last, resolving to 
take his leave, through fear of exciting him still 
further; “I will leave you with Clotilde; I am not 
at all uneasy, Clotilde will take care of you.” 

But Pascal had on this morning received the final 
blow. He took to his bed toward evening, and 
remained for two whole days without opening the 
door of his room. It was in vain that Clotilde, at 
last becoming alarmed, knocked loudly at the door. 
There was no answer. Martine went in her turn 
and begged monsieur, through the keyhole, at least 
to tell her if he needed anything. A deathlike 
silence reigned ; the room seemed to be empty. 

Then, on the morning of the third day, as the 
young girl by chance turned the knob, the door 
yielded ; perhaps it had been unlocked for hours. 
And she might enter freely this room in which she 
had never set foot : a large room, rendered cold by 
its northern exposure, in which she saw a small iron 
bed without curtains, a shower bath in a corner, a 
long black wooden table, a few chairs, and on the 
table, on the floor, along the walls, an array of 
chemical apparatus, mortars, furnaces, machines, 
instrument cases. Pascal, up and dressed, was sit- 
ting on the edge of his bed, in trying to arrange 
which he had exhausted himself. 

“Don’t you want me to nurse you, then?” she 
asked with anxious tenderness, without venturing 
to advance into the room. 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


“Oh, you can come in,” he said with a dejected 
gesture. “I won’t beat you. I have not the 
strength to do that now.” 

And from this day on he tolerated her about him, 
and allowed her to wait on him. But he had 
caprices still. He would not let her enter the room 
when he was in bed, possessed by a sort of morbid 
shame; then, he made her send him Martine. But 
he seldom remained in bed, dragging himself about 
from chair to chair, in his utter inability to do any 
kind of work. His malady continued to grow 
worse, until at last he was reduced to utter despair, 
tortured by sick headaches, and without the 
strength, as he said, to put one foot before the 
other, convinced every morning that he would 
spend the night at the Tulettes, a raving maniac. 
He grew thin; his face, under its crown of white 
hair — which he still cared for through a last rem- 
nant of vanity — acquired a look of suffering, of 
tragic beauty. And although he allowed himself 
to be waited on, he refused roughly all remedies, in 
the distrust of medicine into which he had fallen. 

Clotilde now devoted herself to him entirely. 
She gave up everything else; at first she attended 
low mass, then she left off going to church alto- 
gether. In her impatience for some certain happi- 
ness, she felt as if she were taking a step toward 
that end by thus devoting all her moments to the 
service of a beloved being, whom she wished to see 
once more well and happy. She made a complete 
sacrifice of herself, she sought to find happiness in 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


1 9 0 


the happiness of another; and all this uncon- 
sciously, solely at the impulse of her woman’s 
heart, in the midst of the crisis through which she 
was still passing, and which was modifying her char- 
acter profoundly, without her knowledge. She re- 
mained silent regarding the disagreement which 
separated them. The idea did not again occur to 
her to throw herself on his neck, crying that she w^s 
his, that he might return to life, since she gave her- 
self to him. In her thoughts she grieved to see 
him suffer; she was only an affectionate girl, wfro 
took care of him, as any female relative would have 
done. And her attentions were very pure, very 
delicate, occupying her life so completely that her 
days now passed swiftly, exempt from tormenting 
thoughts of the Beyond, filled with the one wish of 
curing him. 

But where she had a hard battle to fight was in 
prevailing upon him to use his hypodermic injec- 
tions upon himself. He flew into a passion, dis- 
owned his discovery, and called himself an imbecile. 
She too cried out. It was she now who had faith 
in science, who grew indignant at seeing him doubt 
his own genius. He resisted for a long time; then 
yielding to the empire which she had acquired over 
him, he consented, simply to avoid the affectionate 
dispute which she renewed with him every morning. 
From the very first he experienced great relief from 
the injections, although he refused to acknowledge 
it. His mind became clearer, and he gradually 
gained strength. Then she was exultant, filled with 


±06 


DOCTOR PA SCAD 


enthusiastic pride in him. She vaunted his treat- 
ment, and became indignant because he did not ad- 
mire himself, as an example of the miracles which he 
was able to work. He smiled ; he was now beginning 
to see clearly into his own condition. Ramond had 
spoken truly, his illness had been nothing but nervous 
exhaustion. Perhaps he would get over it after all. 

“Ah, it is you who are curing me, little girl,” he 
would say, not wishing to confess his hopes. “Med- 
icines, you see, act according to the hand that gives 
them.” 

The convalescence was slow, lasting through the 
whole of February. The weather remained clear 
and cold ; there was not a single day in which the 
study was not flooded with warm, pale sunshine. 
There were hours of relapse, however, hours of the # 
blackest melancholy, in which all the patient’s ter- 
rors returned ; when his guardian, disconsolate, was 
obliged to sit at the other end of the room, in order 
not to irritate him still more. He despaired anew 
of his recovery. He became again bitter and. 
aggressively ironical. 

It was on one of those bad days that Pascal, 
approaching a window, saw his neighbor M. Bel- 
lombre, the retired professor, making the round of 
his garden to see if his fruit trees were well covered 
with blossoms. The sight of the old man, so neat 
and so erect, with the fine placidity of the egoist, 
on whom illness had apparently never laid hold, 
suddenly put Pascal beside himself. 

“Ah!” he growled, “there is one who will never 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


201 


overwork himself, who will never endanger his 
health by worrying !” 

And he launched forth into an ironical eulogy on 
selfishness. To be alone in the world, not to have 
a friend, to have neither wife nor child, what happi- 
ness ! That hard-hearted miser, who for forty years 
had had only other people’s children to cuff, who 
lived aloof from the world, without even a dog, with 
a deaf and dumb gardener older than himself, was 
he not an example of the greatest happiness possi- 
ble on earth? Without a responsibility, without a 
duty, without an anxiety, other than that of taking 
care of his dear health ! He was a wise man, he 
would live a hundred years. 

“Ah, the fear of life! that is cowardice which is 
truly the best wisdom. To think that I should 
ever have regretted not having a child of my own ! 
Has anyone a right to bring miserable creatures 
into the world? Bad heredity should be ended, life 
should be ended. The only honest man is that old 
coward there !” 

M. Bellombre continued peacefully making the 
round of his pear trees in the March sunshine. He 
did not risk a too hasty movement ; he economized 
his fresh old age. If he met a stone in his path, he 
pushed it aside with the end of his cane, and then 
walked'tranquilly on. 

“Look at him! Is he not well preserved ; is he 
not handsome? Have not all the blessings of 
heaven been showered down upon him? He is the 
happiest man I know.” 


202 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


Clotilde, who had listened in silence, suffered from 
this irony of Pascal, the full bitterness of which she 
divined. She, who usually took M. Bellombre s part, 
felt a protest rise up within her. Tears came to her 
eyes, and she answered simply in a low voice : 

“Yes; but he is not loved.” 

These words put a sudden end to the painful 
scene. Pascal, as if he had received an electric 
shock, turned and looked at her. A sudden rush 
of tenderness brought tears to his eyes also, and he 
left the room to keep from weeping. 

The days wore on in the midst of these alterna- 
tions of good and bad hours. He recovered his 
strength but slowly, and what put him in despair 
was that whenever he attempted to work he was 
seized by a profuse perspiration. If he had per- 
sisted, he would assuredly have fainted. So long 
as he did not work he felt that his convales- 
cence was making little progress. He began to 
take an interest again, however, in his accustomed 
investigations. He read over again the last pages 
that he had written, and, with this reawakening of 
the scientist in him, his former anxieties returned. 
At one time he fell into a state of such depression, 
that the house and all it contained ceased to exist 
for him. He might have been robbed, everything 
he possessed might have been taken and destroyed, 
without his even being conscious of the disaster. 
Now he became again watchful, from time to time 
he would feel his pocket, to assure himself that the 
key of the press was there. 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


203 


But one morning when he had overslept himself, 
and did not leave his room until eleven o’clock, he 
saw Clotilde in the study, quietly occupied in copy- 
ing with great exactness in pastel a branch of flow- 
ering almond. She looked up, smiling ; and taking 
a key that was lying beside her on the desk, she 
offered it to him, saying: 

“Here, master.” 

Surprised, not yet comprehending, he looked at 
the object which she held toward him. 

“What is that?” he asked. 

“It is the key of the press, which you must have 
dropped from your pocket yesterday, and which I 
picked up here this morning.” 

Pascal took it with extraordinary emotion. He 
looked at it, and then at Clotilde. Was it ended, 
then? She would persecute him no more. She was 
no longer eager to rob everything, to burn every- 
thing. And seeing her still smiling, she also look- 
ing moved, an immense joy filled his heart. 

He caught her in his arms, crying: 

“Ah, little girl, if we might only not be too 
unhappy !” 

Then he opened a drawer of his table and threw 
the key into it, as he used to do formerly. 

From this time on he gained strength, and his 
convalescence progressed more rapidly. Relapses 
were still possible, for he was still very weak. But 
he was able to write, and this made the days less 
heavy. The sun, too, shone more brightly, the 
study being so warm at times that it became neces- 


204 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


sary to half close the shutters. He refused to see 
visitors, barely tolerated Martine, and had his 
mother told that he was sleeping, when she came 
at long intervals to inquire for him. He was happy 
only in this delightful solitude, nursed by the rebel, 
the enemy of yesterday, the docile pupil of to-day. 
They would often sit together in silence for a long 
time, without feeling any constraint. They medi- 
tated, or lost themselves in infinitely sweet reveries. 

One day, however, Pascal seemed very grave. 
He was now convinced that his illness had resulted 
from purely accidental causes, and that heredity had 
had no part in it. But this filled him none the less 
with humility. 

“My God!” he murmured, “how insignificant we 
are ! I who thought myself so strong, who was so 
proud of my sane reason ! And here have I barely 
escaped being made insane by a little trouble and 
overwork !” 

He was silent, and sank again into thought. 
After a time his eyes brightened, he had conquered 
himself. And in a moment of reason and courage, 
he came to a resolution. 

“If I am getting better,” he said, “it is especially 
for your sake that I am glad.” 

Clotilde, not understanding, looked up and said : 

“How is that?” 

“Yes, on account of your marriage. Now you 
will be able to fix the day.” 

She still seemed surprised. 

“Ah, true, my marriage!” 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


205 


“Shall we decide at once upon the second week 
in June?” 

“Yes, the second week in June; that will do 
very well.” 

They spoke no more ; she fixed her eyes again on 
the piece of sewing on which she was engaged, while 
he, motionless, and with a grave face, sat looking 
into space. 


VII. 


On this day, on arriving at La Souleiade, old 
Mme. Rougon perceived Martine in the kitchen 
garden, engaged in planting leeks; and, as she some- 
times did, she went over to the servant to have a 
chat with her, and find out from her how things 
were going on, before entering the house. 

For some time past she had been in despair about 
what she called Clotilde’s desertion. She felt truly 
that she would now never obtain the documents 
through her. The girl was behaving disgracefully, 
she was siding with Pascal, after all she had done 
for her; and she was becoming perverted to such a 
degree that for a month past she had not been seen 
in church. Thus she returned to her first idea, to 
get Clotilde away and win her son over when, left 
alone, he should be weakened by solitude. Since 
she had not been able to persuade the girl to go live 
with her brother, she eagerly desired the marriage. 
She would like to throw her into Dr. Ramond’s arms 
to-morrow, in her impatience at so many delays. 
And she had come this afternoon with a feverish 
desire to hurry on matters. 

“Good-day, Martine. How is everyone here?” 

The servant, kneeling down, her hands full of 
clay, lifted up her pale face, protected against the 
sun by a handkerchief tied over her cap. 

206 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


207 


“As usual, madame, pretty well.” 

They went on talking, F£licite treating her as a 
confidante, as a devoted daughter, one of the 
family, to whom she could tell everything. She 
began by questioning her ; she wished to know if 
Dr. Ramond had come that morning. He had 
come, but they had talked only about indifferent 
matters. This put her in despair, for she had seen 
the doctor on the previous day, and he had unbos- 
omed himself to her, chagrined at not having yet 
received a decisive answer, and eager now to obtain 
at least Clotilde’s promise. Things could not go on 
in this way, the young girl must be compelled to 
engage herself to him. 

“He has too much delicacy,” she cried. “I have 
told him so. I knew very well that this morning, 
even, he would not venture to demand a positive 
answer. And I have come to interfere in the mat- 
ter. We shall see if I cannot oblige her to come to 
a decision.” 

Then, more calmly: 

“My son is on his feet now; he does not need 
her.” 

Martine, who was again stooping over the bed, 
planting her leeks, straightened herself quickly. 

“Ah, that for sure !” 

And a flush passed over her face, worn by thirty 
years of service. For a wound bled within her; for 
some time past the master scarcely tolerated her 
about him. During the whole time of his illness he 
had kept her at a distance, accepting her services 


208 


DOCTOR PASCAL . 


less and less every day, and finally closing altogether 
to her the door of his room and of the workroom. 
She had a vague consciousness of what was taking 
place, an instinctive jealousy tortured her, in her 
adoration of the master, whose chattel she had 
been satisfied to be for so many years. 

“For sure, we have no need of mademoiselle. 
I am quite able to take care of monsieur.” 

Then she, who was so discreet, spoke of her 
labors in the garden, saying that she made time to 
cultivate the vegetables, so as to save a few days’ 
wages of a man. True, the house was large, but 
when one was not afraid of work, one could manage 
to do all there was to be done. And then, when 
mademoiselle should have left them, that would 
be always one less to wait upon. And her eyes 
brightened unconsciously at the thought of the great 
solitude, of the happy peace in which they should 
live after this departure. 

“It would give me pain,” she said, lowering her 
voice, “for it would certainly give monsieur a great 
deal. I would never have believed that I could be 
brought to wish for such a separation. Only, ma- 
dame, I agree with you that it is necessary, for I am 
greatly afraid that mademoiselle will end by going 
to ruin here, and that there will be another soul lost 
to the good God. Ah, it is very sad ; my heart is so 
heavy about it sometimes that it is ready to burst.” 

“They are both upstairs, are they not?” said 
Felicite. “I will go up and see them, and I will 
undertake to oblige them to end the matter.” 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


209 


An hour later, when she came down again, she 
found Martine still on her knees on the soft earth, 
finishing her planting. Upstairs, from her first 
words, when she said that she had been talking 
with Dr. Ramond, and that he had shown himself 
anxious to know his fate quickly, she saw that 
Dr. Pascal approved — he looked grave, he nodded 
his head as if to say that this wish seemed to him 
very natural. Clotilde, herself, ceasing to smile, 
seemed to listen to him with deference. But she 
manifested some surprise. Why did they press 
her? Master had fixed the marriage for the second 
week in June; she had, then, two full months before 
her. Very soon she would speak about it with 
Ramond. Marriage was so serious a matter that 
they might very well give her time to reflect, and 
let her wait until the last moment to engage herself. 
And she said all this with her air of good sense, like 
a person resolved on coming to a decision. And 
Felicite was obliged to content herself with the 
evident desire that both had that matters should 
have the most reasonable conclusion. 

‘‘Indeed I believe that it is settled,” ended Feli- 
city. “He seems to place no obstacle in the way, 
and she seems only to wish not to act hastily, like 
a girl who desires to examine her heart closely, 
before engaging herself for life. I will give her a 
week more for reflection.” 

Martine, sitting on her heels, was looking fixedly 
on the ground with a clouded face. 

‘‘Yes, yes,” she murmured, in a low voice, ‘‘made- 


210 


DOCTOR PASCAL . 


moiselle has been reflecting a great deal of late. I 
am always meeting her in some corner. You speak 
to her, and she does not answer you That is the 
way people are when they are breeding a disease, or 
when they have a secret on their mind. There is 
something going on; she is no longer the same, no 
longer the same.” 

And she took the dibble again and planted a leek, 
in her rage for work; while old Mme. Rougon went 
away, somewhat tranquillized ; certain, she said, that 
the marriage would take place. 

Pascal, in effect, seemed to accept Clotilde’s mar- 
riage as a thing settled, inevitable. He had not 
spoken with her about it again, the rare allusions 
which they made to it between themselves, in their 
hourly conversations, left them undisturbed ; and it 
was simply as if the two months which they still 
had to live together were to be without end, an 
eternity stretching beyond their view. 

She, especially, would look at him smiling, put- 
ting off to a future day troubles and decisions with 
a pretty vague gesture, as if to leave everything to 
beneficent life. He, now well and gaining strength 
daily, grew melancholy only when he returned to 
the solitude of his chamber at night, after she had 
retired. He shuddered and turned cold at the 
thought that a time would come when he would be 
always alone. Was it the beginning of old age that 
made him shiver in this way? He seemed to see it 
stretching before him, like a shadowy region in 
which he already began to feel all his energy melt- 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


2 1 1 


ing away. And then the regret of having neither 
wife nor child filled him with rebelliousness, and 
wrung his heart with intolerable anguish. 

Ah, why had he not lived ! There were times 
when he cursed science, accusing it of having taken 
from him the best part of his manhood. He had 
let himself be devoured by work ; work had con- 
sumed his brain, consumed his heart, consumed his 
flesh. All this solitary, passionate labor had pro- 
duced only books, blackened paper, that would be 
scattered to the winds, whose cold leaves chilled his 
hands as he turned them over. And no living 
woman’s breast to lean upon, no child’s warm locks 
to kiss! He had lived the cold, solitary life of a 
selfish scientist, and he would die in cold solitude. 
Was he indeed going to die thus? Would he never 
taste the happiness enjoyed by even the common 
porters, by the carters who cracked their whips, 
passing by under his windows? But he must hasten, 
if he would ; soon, no doubt, it would be too late. 
All his unemployed youth, all his pent-up desires, 
surged tumultuously through his veins. He swore 
that he would yet love, that he would live a new 
life, that he would drain the cup of every passion 
that he had not yet tasted, before he should be an 
old man. He would knock at the doors, he would 
stop the passers-by, he would scour the fields and 
the town. 

On the following day, when he had taken his 
shower bath and left his room, all his fever was 
calmed, the burning pictures had faded away, 


lil 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


and he fell back into his natural timidity. Then, 
on the next night, the fear of solitude drove sleep 
away as before, his blood kindled again, and the 
same despair, the same rebelliousness, the same 
longing not to die without having known family 
joys returned. He suffered a great deal in this 
crisis. 

During these feverish nights, with eyes wide open 
in the darkness, he dreamed always, over and over 
again, the same dream. A girl would come along 
the road, a girl of twenty, marvelously beautiful; 
and she would enter and kneel down before him in 
an attitude of submissive adoration, and he would 
marry her. She was one of those pilgrims of love 
such as we find in ancient story, who have followed 
a star to come. and restore health and strength to 
some aged king, powerful and covered with glory. 
He was the aged king, and she adored him, she 
wrought the miracle, with her twenty years, of 
bestowing on him a part of her youth. In her 
love he recovered his courage and his faith in life. 

Ah, youth! he hungered fiercely for it. In his 
declining days this passionate longing for youth 
was like a revolt against approaching age, a desper- 
ate desire to turn back, to be young again, to begin 
life over again. And in this longing to begin life 
over again, there was not only regret for the van- 
ished joys of youth, the inestimable treasure of 
dead hours, to which memory lent its charm ; there 
was also the determined will to enjoy, now, his 
health and strength, to lose nothing of the joy of 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


213 

loving. Ah, youth! how eagerly he would taste of 
its every pleasure, how eagerly he would drain 
every cup, before his teeth should fall out, before 
his limbs should grow feeble, before the blood 
should be chilled in his veins. A pang pierced his 
heart when he remembered himself, a slender youth 
of twenty, running and leaping agilely, vigorous and 
hardy as a young oak, his teeth glistening, his hair 
black and luxuriant. How he would cherish them, 
these gifts scorned before, if a miracle could restore 
them to him ! 

And youthful womanhood, a young girl who 
might chance to pass by, disturbed him, causing 
him profound emotion. This was often even al- 
together apart from the individual : the image, 
merely, of youth, the perfume and the dazzling 
freshness which emanated from it, bright eyes, 
healthy lips, blooming cheeks, a delicate neck, 
above all, rounded and satin-smooth, shaded on the 
back with down ; and youthful womanhood always 
presented itself to him tall and slight, divinely slen- 
der in its chaste nudeness. His eyes, gazing into 
vacancy, followed the vision, his heart was steeped 
in infinite longing. There was nothing good or 
desirable but youth; it was the flower of the world, 
the only beauty, the only joy, the only true good, 
with health, which nature could bestow on man. 
Ah, to begin life over again, to be young again, to 
clasp in his embrace youthful womanhood ! 

Pascal and Clotilde, now that the fine April days 
had come, covering the fruit trees with blossoms, 


214 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


resumed their morning walks in La Souleiade. It 
was the first time that he had gone out since his 
illness, and she led him to the threshing yard, along 
the paths in the pine wood, and back again to the 
terrace crossed by the two bars of shadow thrown 
by the secular cypresses. The sun had already 
warmed the old flagstones there, and the wide hori- 
zon stretched out under a dazzling sky. 

One morning when Clotilde had been running, 
she returned to the house in such exuberant spirits 
and so full of pleasant excitement that she went up 
to the workroom without t'aking off either her gar- 
den hat or the lace scarf which she had tied around 
her neck. 

“Oh,” she said, “I am so warm ! And how stupid 
I am, not to have taken off my things downstairs. 
I will go down again at once.” 

She had thrown the scarf on a chair on entering. 

But her feverish fingers became impatient when 
she tried to untie the strings of her large straw hat. 

“There, now! I have fastened the knot. I can- 
not undo it, and you must come to my assistance.” 

Pascal, happy and excited too by the pleasure of 
the walk, rejoiced to see her so beautiful and so 
merry. He went over and stood in front of her. 

“Wait ; hold up your chin. Oh, if you keep mov- 
ing like that, how do you suppose I can do it?” 

She laughed aloud. He could see the laughter 
swelling her throat, like a wave of sound. His fin- 
gers became entangled under her chin, that delicious 
part of the throat whose warm satin he involunta- 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


2i5 

rily touched. She had on a gown cut sloping in the 
neck, and through the opening he inhaled all the 
living perfume of the woman, the pure fragrance of 
her youth, warmed by the sunshine. All at once a 
vertigo seized him and he thought he was going to 
faint. 

“No, no! I cannot do it,” he said, “unless you 
keep still !” 

The blood throbbed in his temples, and his fin- 
gers trembled, while she leaned further back, uncon- 
sciously offering the temptation of her fresh girlish 
beauty. It was the vision of royal youth, the 
bright eyes, the healthy lips, the blooming cheeks, 
above all, the delicate neck, satin-smooth and round, 
shaded on the back by down. And she seemed to 
him so delicately graceful, with her slender throat, 
in her divine bloom ! 

“There, it is done !“ she cried. 

Without knowing how, he had untied the strings. 
The room whirled round, and then he saw her again, 
bareheaded now, with her starlike face, shaking 
back her golden curls laughingly. Then he was 
seized with a fear that he would catch her in his 
arms and press mad kisses on her bare neck, and 
arms, and throat. And he fled from the room, 
taking with him the hat, which he had kept in his 
hand, saying: 

“I will hang it in the hall. Wait for me; I want 
to speak to Martine.” 

Once downstairs, he hurried to the abandoned 
room and locked himself into it, trembling lest she 


2i6 


Doctor Dacca l. 


should become uneasy and come down here to seek 
him. He looked wild and haggard, as if he had 
just committed a crime. He spoke aloud, and he 
trembled as he gave utterance for the first time to 
the cry that he had always loved her madly, pas- 
sionately. Yes, ever since she had grown into 
womanhood he had adored her. And he saw her 
clearly before him, as if a curtain had been suddenly 
torn aside, as she was when, from an awkward girl, 
she became a charming and lovely creature, with 
her long tapering limbs, her strong slender body, 
with its round throat, round neck, and round and 
supple arms. And it was monstrous, but it was 
true — he hungered for all this with a devouring 
hunger, for this youth, this fresh, blooming, fragrant 
flesh. 

Then Pascal, dropping into a rickety chair, hid his 
face in his hands, as if to shut out the light of day, 
and burst into great sobs. Good God ! what was to 
become of him? A girl whom his brother had con- 
fided to him, whom he had brought up like a good 
father, and who was now — this temptress of twenty- 
five^-woman in her supreme omnipotence! He felt 
himself more defenseless, weaker than a child. 

And above this physical desire, he loved her also 
with an immense tenderness, enamored of her moral 
and intellectual being, of her right-mindedness, of 
her fine intelligence, so fearless and so clear. Even 
their discord, the disquietude about spiritual things 
by which she was tortured, made her only all the 
more precious to him, as if she were a being differ- 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


S17 


ent from himself, in whom he found a little of the 
infinity of things. She pleased him in her rebellions, 
when she held her ground against him ; she was his 
companion and pupil; he saw her such as he had 
made her, with her great heart, her passionate frank- 
ness, her triumphant reason. And she was always 
present with him ; he did not believe that he could 
exist where she was not ; he had need of her breath ; 
of the flutter of her skirts near him ; of her thought- 
fulness and affection, by which he felt himself con- 
stantly surrounded; of her looks; of her smile; of 
her whole daily woman’s life, which she had given 
him, which she would not have the cruelty to take 
back from him again. At the thought that she was 
going away, that she would not be always here, it 
seemed to him as if the heavens were about to fall 
and crush him ; as if the end of all things had come ; 
as if he were about to be plunged in icy darkness. 
She alone existed in the world, she alone was lofty 
and virtuous, intelligent and beautiful, with a 
miraculous beauty. Why, then, since he adored 
her and since he was her master, did he not go up- 
stairs and take her in his arms and kiss her like an idol ? 
They were both free, she was ignorant of nothing, 
she was a woman in age. This would be happiness. 

Pascal, who had ceased to weep, rose, and would 
have walked to the door. But suddenly he dropped 
again into his chair, bursting into a fresh passion of 
sobs. No", no, it was abominable, it could not be! 
He felt on his head the frost of his white hair; and 
he had a horror of his age, of his fifty-nine years, 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


218 

when he thought of her twenty-five years. His 
former chill fear again took possession of him, the 
certainty that she had subjugated him, that he 
would be powerless against the daily temptation. 
And he saw her giving him the strings of her hat 
to untie; compelling him to lean over her to make 
some correction in her work; and he saw himself, 
too, blind, mad, devouring her neck with ardent 
kisses. His indignation against himself at this was 
so great that he arose, now courageously, and had 
the strength to go upstairs to the workroom, deter- 
mined to conquer himself. 

Upstairs Clotilde had tranquilly resumed her 
drawing. She did not even look around at his 
entrance, but contented herself with saying: 

“How long you have been! I was beginning to 
think that Martine must have made a mistake of at 
least ten sous in her accounts.” 

This customary jest about the servant’s miserli- 
ness made him laugh. And he went and sat down 
quietly at his table. They did not speak again 
until breakfast time. A great sweetness bathed 
him and calmed him, now that he was near her. 
He ventured to look at her, and he was touched by 
her delicate profile, by her serious, womanly air of 
application. Had he been the prey of a night- 
mare, downstairs, then? Would he be able to con- 
quer himself so easily? 

“Ah!” he cried, when Martine called them, “how 
hungry I am! You shall see how I am going to 
make new muscle!” 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


219 


She went over to him, and took him by the arm, 
saying : 

“That’s right, master; you must be gay and 
strong!” 

But that night, when he was in his own room, 
the agony began again. At the thought of losing 
her he was obliged to bury his face in the pillow to 
stifle his cries. He pictured her to himself in the 
arms of another, and all the tortures of jealousy 
racked his soul. Never could he find the courage 
to consent to such a sacrifice. All sorts of plans 
clashed together in his seething brain; he would 
turn her from the marriage, and keep her with him, 
without ever allowing her to suspect his passion ; he 
would take her away, and they would go from city 
to city, occupying their minds with endless studies, 
in order to keep up their companionship as master 
and pupil ; or even, if it should be necessary, he 
would send her to her brother to nurse him, he 
would lose her forever rather than give her to a hus- 
band. And at each of these resolutions he felt his 
heart, torn asunder, cry out with anguish in the 
imperious need of possessing her entirely. He was 
no longer satisfied with her presence, he wished to 
keep her for himself, with himself, as she appeared 
to him in her radiant beauty, in the darkness of his 
chamber, with her unbound hair falling around 
her. 

His arms clasped the empty air, and he sprang 
out of bed, staggering like a drunken man ; and it 
was only in the darkness and silence of the work- 


220 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


room that he awoke from this sudden fit of madness* 
Where, then, was he going, great God? To knock 
at the door of this sleeping child? to break it in, 
perhaps, with a blow of his shoulder? The soft, 
pure respiration, which he fancied he heard like a 
sacred wind in the midst of the profound silence, 
struck him on the face and turned him back. And 
he returned to his room and threw himself on his 
bed, in a passion of shame and wild despair. 

On the following day when he arose, Pascal, worn 
out by want of sleep, had come to a decision. He 
took his daily shower bath, and he felt himself 
stronger and saner. The resolution to which he 
had come was to compel Clotilde to give her word. 
When she should have formally promised to marry 
Ramond, it seemed to him that this final solu- 
tion would calm him, would forbid his indulging 
in any false hopes. This would be a barrier the 
more, an insurmountable barrier between her and 
him. He would be from that moment armed 
against his desire, and if he still suffered, it would 
be suffering only, without the horrible fear of be- 
coming a dishonorable man. 

On this morning, when he told the young girl 
that she ought to delay no longer, that she owed a 
decisive answer to the worthy fellow who had been 
awaiting it so long, she seemed at first astonished. 
She looked straight into his eyes, but he had suffi- 
cient command over himself not to show confusion; 
he insisted merely, with a slightly grieved air, as if 
it distressed him to have to say these things to her. 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


221 


Finally, she smiled faintly and turned her head 
aside, saying: 

“Then, master, you wish me to leave you?” 

“My dear,” he answered evasively, “I assure you 
that this is becoming ridiculous. Ramond will 
have the right to be angry.” 

She went over to her desk, to arrange some 
papers which were on it. Then, after a moment’s 
silence, she said : 

“It is odd; now you are siding with grandmother 
and Martine. They, too, are persecuting me to end 
this matter. I thought I had a few days more. 
But, in truth, if you all three urge me ” 

She did not finish, and he did not press her to 
explain herself more clearly. 

“When do you wish me to tell Ramond to come, 
then?” 

“Why, he may come whenever he wishes; it does 
not displease me to see him. But don’t trouble 
yourself. I will let him know that we will expect 
him one of these afternoons.” 

On the following day the same scene began over 
again. Clotilde had taken no step yet; and Pascal 
was now angry. He suffered martyrdom ; he had 
crises of anguish and rebelliousness when she was 
not present to calm him by her smiling freshness. 
And he insisted, in emphatic language, that she 
should behave seriously and not trifle any longer 
with an honorable fnan who loved her. 

“The devil! Since the thing is decided, let us be 
done with it. I warn you that I* will send word to 


222 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


Ramond, and that he will be here to-morrow at 
three o’clock.” 

She listened in silence, her eyes fixed on the 
ground. Neither seemed to wish to touch upon the 
question as to whether the marriage had really been 
decided on or not, and they took the standpoint 
that there had been a previous decision, which 
was irrevocable. When she looked up again he 
trembled, for he felt a breath pass by ; he thought 
she was on the point of saying that she had ques- 
tioned herself, and that she refused this marriage. 
What would he have done, what would have be- 
come of him, good God ! Already he was filled 
with an immense joy and a wild terror. But she 
looked at him with the discreet and affectionate 
smile which never now left her lips, and she an- 
swered with a submissive air: 

“As you please, master. Send him word to be 
here to-morrow at three o’clock.” 

Pascal spent so dreadful a night that he rose late, 
saying, as an excuse, that he had one of his old 
headaches. He found relief only under the icy 
deluge of the shower bath. At ten o’clock he left 
the house, saying he would go himself to see 
Ramond; but he had another object in going out — 
lie had seen at a shop in Plassans a corsage of old 
point d’Alen^on ; a marvel of beauty which lay there 
awaiting some lover’s generous folly, and the 
thought had come to. him in the midst of the tor 
tures of the night, to make a present of it to Clo- 
tilde, to adorn her wedding gown. This bitter idea 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


223 


of himself adorning her, of making her beautiful 
and fair for the gift of herself, touched his heart, 
exhausted by sacrifice. She knew the corsage, she 
had admired it with him one day wonderingly, 
wishing for it only to place it on the shoulders of 
the Virgin at St. Saturnin, an antique Virgin adored 
by the faithful. The shopkeeper gave it to him in 
a little box which he could conceal, and which he 
hid, on his return to the house, in the bottom of his 
writing desk. 

At three o’clock Dr. Ramond presented himself, 
and he found Pascal and Clotilde in the parlor, 
where they had been awaiting him with secret ex- 
citement and a somewhat forced gayety, avoid- 
ing any further allusion to his visit. They 
received him smiling with exaggerated cordiality. 

“Why, you are perfectly well again, master!” said 
the young man. “You never looked so strong.” 

Pascal shook his head. 

“Oh, oh, strong, perhaps! only the heart is no 
longer here.” 

This involuntary avowal made Clotilde start, and 
she looked from the one to the other, as if, by the 
force of circumstances, she compared them with 
each other — Ramond, with his smiling and superb 
face — the face of the handsome physician adored by 
the women — his luxuriant black hair and beard, in 
all the splendor of his young manhood; and Pascal, 
with his white hair and his white beard. This fleece 
of snow, still so abundant, retained the tragic beauty 
of the six months of torture that he had just passed 


224 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


through. His sorrowful face had aged a little, only 
his eyes remained still youthful; brown eyes, bril- 
liant and limpid. But at this moment all his fea- 
tures expressed so much gentleness, such exalted 
goodness, that Clotilde ended by letting her gaze 
rest upon him with profound tenderness. 1 here 
was silence for a moment, and each heart thrilled. 

“Well, my children,” resumed Pascal heroically, 
“I think you have something to say to each other. 
I have something to do, too, downstairs. I will 
come up again presently.” 

And he left the room, smiling back at them. 

As soon as they were alone, Clotilde went frankly 
straight over to Ramond, with both hands out- 
stretched. Taking his hands in hers, she held 
them as she spoke. 

“Listen, my dear friend ; I am going to give you 
a great grief. You must not be too angry with me, 
for I assure you that I have a very profound friend- 
ship for you.” 

He understood at once, and he turned very pale. 

“Clotilde, give me no answer now, I beg of you; 
take more time, if you wish to reflect further.” 

“It is useless, my dear friend, my decision is 
made.” 

She looked at him with her fine, loyal look. She 
had not released his hands, in order that he might 
know that she was not excited, and that she was his 
friend. And it was he who resumed, in a low voice : 

“Then you say no?” 

“I say no, and I assure you that it pains me 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


225 


greatly to say it. Ask me nothing; you will no 
doubt know later on.” 

He sat down, crushed by the emotion which he 
repressed like a strong and self-contained man, 
whose mental balance the greatest sufferings cannot 
disturb. Never before had any grief agitated him 
like this. He remained mute, while she, standing, 
continued : 

‘‘And above all, my friend, do not believe that I 
have played the coquette with you. If I have 
allowed you to hope, if I have made you wait so 
long for my answer, it was because I did not in very 
truth see clearly myself. You cannot imagine 
through what a crisis I have just passed — a verita- 
ble tempest of emotions, surrounded by darkness 
from out of which I have but just found my way.” 

He spoke at last. 

‘‘Since it is your wish, I will ask you nothing. 
Besides, it is sufficient for you to answer one ques- 
tion. You do not love me, Clotilde?” 

She did not hesitate, but said gravely, with an 
emotion which softened the frankness of her answer: 

‘‘It is true, I do not love you ; I have only a very 
sincere affection for you.” 

He rose, and stopped by a gesture the kind words 
which she would have added. 

“It is ended; let us never speak of it again. I 
wished you to be happy. Do not grieve for me. 
At this moment I feel as if the house had just fallen 
about me in ruins. But I must only extricate 
myself as best I can.” 


226 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


A wave of color passed over his pale face, he 
gasped for air, he crossed over to the window, then 
he walked back with a heavy step, seeking to re- 
cover his self-possession. He drew a long breath. 
In the painful silence which had fallen they heard 
Pascal coming upstairs noisily, to announce his 
return. 

“I entreat you,” murmured Clotilde hurriedly, 
“to say nothing to master. He does not know my 
decision, and I wish to break it to him myself, for 
he was bent upon this marriage.” 

Pascal stood still in the doorway. He was trem- 
bling and breathless, as if he had come upstairs too 
quickly. He still found strength to smile at them, 
saying : 

“Well, children, have you come to an under- 
standing?” 

“Yes, undoubtedly,” responded Ramond, as agi- 
tated as himself. 

“Then it is all settled?” 

“Quite,” said Clotilde, who had been seized by a 
faintness. 

Pascal walked over to his work table, supporting 
himself by the furniture, and dropped into the chair 
beside it. 

“Ah, ah ! you see the legs are not so strong after 
all. It is this old carcass of a body. But the heart 
is strong. And I am very happy, my children ; 
your happiness will make me well again.” 

But when Ramond, after a few minutes’ further 
conversation, had gone away, he seemed troubled at 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


227 


finding himself alone with the young girl, and he 
again asked her: 

“It is settled, quite settled; you swear it to me?” 

“Entirely settled.” 

After this he did not speak again. He nodded 
his head, as if to repeat that he was delighted ; that 
nothing could be better; that at last they were all 
going to live in peace. He closed his eyes, feigning 
to drop asleep, as he sometimes did in the after- 
noon. But his heart beat violently, and his closely 
shut eyelids held back the tears. 

That evening, at about ten o’clock, when Clotilde 
went downstairs for a moment, to give an order to 
Martine before she should have gone to bed, Pascal 
profited by the opportunity of being left alone, to 
go and lay the little box containing the lace corsage 
on the young girl’s bed. She came upstairs again, 
wished him the accustomed good-night, and he had 
been for at least twenty minutes in his own room, 
and was already in his shirt sleeves, when a burst of 
gayety sounded outside his door. A little hand 
tapped, and a fresh voice cried, laughing: 

“Come, come and look!” 

He opened the door, unable to resist this appeal 
of youth, conquered by his joy. 

“Oh, come, come and see what a beautiful little 
bird has put on my bed!” 

And she drew him to her room, taking no refusal. 
She had lighted the two candles in it, and th^ 
antique, pleasant chamber, with its hangings of 
faded rose color, seemed transformed into a chapel; 


228 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


and on the bed, like a sacred cloth offered to the 
adoration of the faithful, she had spread the corsage 
of old point d’Alengon. 

“You would not believe it! Imagine, I did not 
see the box at first. I set things in order a little, as 
I do every evening. I undressed, and it was only 
when I was getting into bed that I noticed your 
present. Ah, what a surprise ! I was overwhelmed 
by it ! I felt that I could never wait for the morn- 
ing, and I put on a skirt and ran to look for you.” 

It was not until then that he perceived that she 
was only half dressed, as on the night of the storm, 
when he had surprised her stealing his papers. And 
she seemed divine, with her tall, girlish form, her 
tapering limbs, her supple arms, her slender body, 
with its small, firm throat. 

She took his hands and pressed them caressingly 
in her little ones. 

“How good you are; how I thank you ! Such a 
marvel of beauty, so lovely a present for me, who 
am nobody ! And you remembered that I had 
admired it, this antique relic of art. I said to you 
that only the Virgin of St. Saturnin was worthy of 
wearing it on her shoulders. I am so happy! oh, 
so happy! For it is true, I love beautiful things; I 
love them so passionately that at times I wish for 
impossibilities, gowns woven of sunbeams, impalpa- 
ble veils made of the blue of heaven. How beauti- 
ful I am going to look! how beautiful I am going 
to look!” 

Radiant in her ecstatic gratitude, she drew close 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


229 


to him, still looking at the corsage, and compelling 
him to admire it with her. Then a sudden curiosity- 
seized her. 

“But why did you make me this royal present?” 

Ever since she had come to seek him in her joyful 
excitement, Pascal had been walking in a dream. 
He was moved to tears by this affectionate grati- 
tude; he stood there, not feeling the terror which he 
had dreaded, but seeming, on the contrary, to be 
filled with joy, as at the approach of a great and 
miraculous happiness. This chamber, which he 
never entered, had the religious sweetness of holy 
places that satisfy all longings for the unattainable. 

His countenance, however, expressed surprise, 
And he answered: 

“Why, this present, my dear, is for your wedding 
gown.” 

She, in her turn, looked for a moment surprised 
as if she had not understood him. Then, with the 
sweet and singular smile which she had worn of late 
she said gayly : 

“Ah, true, my marriage!” 

Then she grew serious again, and said : 

“Then you want to get rid of me? It was in ordei 
to have me here no longer that you were so bent 
upon marrying me. Do you still think me your 
enemy, then ?” 

He felt his tortures return, and he looked away 
from her, wishing to retain his courage. 

“My enemy, yes. Are you not so? We have suf- 
fered so much through each other these last days. 


230 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


It is better in truth that we should separate. And 
then I do not know what your thoughts are; you 
have never given me the answer I have been 
waiting for.” 

She tried in vain to catch his glance, which he 
still kept turned away. She began to talk of the 
terrible night on which they had gone together 
through the papers. It was true, in the shock 
which her whole being had suffered, she had not yec 
told him whether she was with him or against him. 
He had a right to demand an answer. 

She again took his hands in hers, and forced him 
to look at her. 

"And it is because I am your enemy that you are 
sending me away? I am not your enemy. I am 
your servant, your chattel, your property. Do you 
hear? I am with you and for you, for you alone!” 

His face grew radiant ; an intense joy shone 
within his eyes. 

“Yes, I will wear this lace. It is for my wedding 
day, for I wish to be beautiful, very beautiful for 
you. But do you not understand me, then? You 
are my master; it is you I love.” 

"No, no! be silent ; you will make me mad ! You 
are betrothed to another. You have given your 
word. All this madness is happily impossible.” 

“The other! I have compared him with you, and 
I have chosen you. I have dismissed him. He has 
gone away, and he will never return. There are 
only we two now, and it is you I love, and you love 
me. I know it, and I give myself to you.” 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


23! 


He trembled violently. He had ceased to strug- 
gle, vanquished by the longing of eternal love. 

The spacious chamber, with its antique furniture, 
warmed by youth, was as if filled with light. There 
was no longer either fear or suffering; they were 
free. She gave herself to him knowingly, willingly, 
and he accepted the supreme gift like a priceless 
treasure which the strength of his love had won. 
Suddenly she murmured in his ear, in a caressing 
voice, lingering tenderly on the words: 

“Master, oh, master, master!” 

And this word, which she used formerly as a mat- 
ter of habit, at this hour acquired a profound signifi- 
cance, lengthening out and prolonging itself, as 
if it expressed the gift of her whole being. She 
uttered it with grateful fervor, like a woman who 
accepts, and who surrenders herself. Was not the 
mystic vanquished, the real acknowledged, life glo- 
rified with love at last confessed and shared. 

“Master, master, this comes from far back. I 
must tell you ; I must make my confession. It is 
true that I went to church in order to be happy. 
But I could not believe. I wished to understand too 
much; my reason rebelled against their dogmas; 
their paradise appeared to me an incredible puerility. 
But I believed that the world does not stop at sen- 
sation ; that there is a whole unknown world, which 
must be taken into account ; and this, master, I 
believe still. It is the idea of the Beyond, which not 
even happiness, found at last upon your neck, will 
efface. But this longing for happiness, this longing 


232 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


to be happy at once, to have some certainty — how I 
have suffered from it ! If I went to church, it w 7 as 
because I missed something, and I went there to 
seek it. My anguish consisted in this irresistible 
need to satisfy my longing. You remember what 
you used to call my eternal thirst for illusion and 
falsehood. One night, in the threshing yard, under 
the great starry sky, do you remember? I burst 
out against yo.ur sciepce, I was indignant because of 
the ruins with which it strews the earth, I turned 
my eyes away from the dreadful wounds which it 
exposes. And I wished, master, to take you to a 
solitude where we might both live in God, far from 
the world, forgotten by it. Ah, what torture, to 
long, to struggle, and not to be satisfied!” 

Softly, without speaking, he kissed her on both 
eyes. 

“Then, master, do you remember again, there was 
the great moral shock on the night of the storm, 
when you gave me that terrible lesson of life, 
emptying out your envelopes before me. You had 
said to me already: 'Know life, love it, live it as it 
ought to be lived.’ But what a vast, what a fright- 
ful flood, rolling ever onward toward a human sea, 
swelling it unceasingly for the unknown future ! 
And, master, the silent work within me began then. 
There was born, in my heart and in my flesh, the 
bitter strength of the real. At first I was as if 
crushed, the blow was so rude. I could not re- 
cover myself. I kept silent, because I did not 
know clearly what to say. Then, gradually, the 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


2 33 


evolution was effected. I still had struggles, I still 
rebelled against confessing my defeat. But every 
day after this the truth grew clearer within me, I 
knew well that you were my master, and that there 
was no happiness for me outside of you, of your 
science and your goodness. You were life itself, 
broad and tolerant life; saying all, accepting all, 
solely through the love of energy and effort, believ- 
ing in the work of the world, placing the meaning 
of destiny in the labor which we all accomplish with 
love, in our desperate eagerness to live, to love, to 
live anew, to live always, in spite of all the abom- 
inations and miseries of life. Oh, to live, to live! 
This is the great task, the work that always goes on, 
and that will doubtless one day be completed !” 

Silent still, he smiled radiantly, and kissed her on 
the mouth. 

“And, master, though I have always loved you, 
even from my earliest youth, it was, I believe, on 
that terrible night that you marked me for, and 
made me your own. You remember how you 
crushed me in your grasp. It left a bruise, and a 
few drops of blood on my shoulder. Then your 
being entered, as it were, into mine. We struggled ; 
you were the stronger, and from that time I have 
felt the need of a support. At first I thought my- 
self humiliated ; then I saw that it was but an infi- 
nitely sweet submission. I always felt your power 
within me. A gesture of your hand in the dis- 
tance thrilled me as though it had touched me. I 
would have wished that you had seized me again in 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


your grasp, that you had crushed me in it, until my 
being had mingled with yours forever. And I was 
not blind ; I knew well that your wish was the same 
as mine, that the violence which had made me yours 
had made you mine; that you struggled with your- 
self not to seize me and hold me as I passed by you. 
To nurse you when you were ill was some slight sat- 
isfaction. From that time, light began to break 
upon me, and I at last understood. I went no 
more to church, I began to be happy near you, 
you had become certainty and happiness. Do you 
remember that I cried to you, in the threshing yard, 
that something was wanting in our affection. There 
was a void in it which I longed to fill. What could 
be wanting to us unless it were God? And it was 
God — love, and life.” 


VIII. 


Then came a period of idyllic happiness. 
Clotilde was the spring, the tardy rejuvenation that 
came to Pascal in his declining years.. She came, 
bringing to him, with her love, sunshine and flowers. 
Their rapture lifted them above the earth ; and all 
this youth she bestowed on him after his thirty 
years of toil, when he was already weary and worn 
probing the frightful wounds of humanity. He 
revived in the light of her great shining eyes, in the 
fragrance of her pure breath. He had faith again 
in life, in health, in strength, in the eternal renewal 
of nature. 

On the morning after her avowal it was ten 
o’clock before Clotilde left her room. In the mid- 
dle of the workroom she suddenly came upon 
Martine and, in her radiant happiness, with a burst 
of joy that carried everything before it, she rushed 
toward her, crying: 

“Martine, I am not going away! Master and I 
— we love each other.” 

The old servant staggered under the blow. Her 
poor worn face, nunlike under its white cap and 
with its look of renunciation, grew white in the 
keenness of her anguish. Without a word, she 
turned and fled for refuge to her kitchen, where, 


235 


236 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


leaning her elbows on her chopping-table, and bury- 
ing her face in her clasped hands, she burst into a 
passion of sobs. 

CJotilde, grieved and uneasy, followed her. And 
she tried to comprehend and to console her. 

“Come, come, how foolish you are ! What pos- 
sesses you? Master and I will love you all the 
same; we will always keep you with us. You are 
not going to be unhappy because we love each other. 
On the contrary, the house is going to be gay now 
from morning till night. ” 

But Martine only sobbed all the more desperately. 

“Answer me, at least. Tell me why you are 
angry and why you cry. Does it not please you 
then to know that master is so happy, so happy ! 
See, I will call master and he will make you 
answer.” 

At this threat the old servant suddenly rose and 
rushed into her own room, which opened out of the 
kitchen, slamming the door behind her. In vain the 
young girl called and knocked until she was tired ; 
she could obtain no answer. At last Pascal, at- 
tracted by the noise, came downstairs, saying: 

“Why, what is the matter?” 

“Oh, it is that obstinate Martine! Only fancy, 
she began to cry when she knew, that we loved each 
other. And she has barricaded herself in there, and 
she will not stir.” 

She did not stir, in fact. Pascal, in his turn, 
called and knocked. He scolded ; he entreated. 
Then, one after the other, they began all over again. 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


237 


Still there was no answer. A deathlike silence 
reigned in the little room. And he pictured it to 
himself, this little room, religiously clean, with its 
walnut bureau, and its monastic bed furnished with 
white hangings. No doubt the servant had thrown 
herself across this bed, in which she had slept alone 
all her woman’s life, and was burying her face in the 
bolster to stifle her sobs. 

‘‘Ah, so much the worse for her!” said CIo- 
tilde at last, in the egotism of her joy, “let her 
sulk!” 

Then throwing her arms around Pascal, and rais- 
ing to his her charming face, still glowing with the 
ardor of self-surrender, she said : 

“Master, I will be your servant to-day.” 

He kissed her on the eyes with grateful emotion; 
and she at once set about preparing the breakfast, 
turning the kitchen upside down. She had put on 
an enormous white apron, and she looked charming, 
with her sleeves rolled up, showing her delicate 
arms, as if for some great undertaking. There 
chanced to be some cutlets in the kitchen which she 
cooked to a turn. She added some scrambled eggs, 
and she even succeeded in frying some potatoes. 
And they had a delicious breakfast, twenty times 
interrupted by her getting up in her eager zeal, to 
run for the bread, the water, a forgotten fork. If 
he had allowed her, she would have waited upon him 
on her knees. Ah ! to be alone, to be only they 
two in this large friendly house, and to be free to 
laugh and to love each other in peace. 


238 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


They spent the whole afternoon in sweeping and 
putting things in order. He insisted upon helping 
her. It was a play; they amused themselves like 
two merry children. From time to time, however, 
they went back to knock at Martine’s door to 
remonstrate with her. Come, this was foolish, she 
was not going to let herself starve ! Was there ever 
seen such a mule, when no one had said or done 
anything to her! But only the echo of their knocks 
came back mournfully from the silent room. Not 
the slightest sound, not a breath responded. Night 
fell, and they were obliged to make the dinner also, 
which they ate, sitting beside each other, from the 
same plate. Before going to bed, they made a last 
attempt, threatening to break open the door, but 
their ears, glued to the wood, could not catch the 
slightest sound. And on the following day, when 
they went downstairs and found the door still 
hermetically closed, they began to be seriously 
uneasy. For twenty-four hours the servant had 
given no sign of life. 

Then, on returning to the kitchen after a moment’s 
absence, Clotilde and Pascal were stupefied to see 
Martine sitting at her table, picking some sorrel for 
the breakfast. She had silently resumed her place 
as servant. 

“But what was the matter with you?’’ cried 
Clotilde. “Will you speak now?” 

She lifted up her sad face, stained by tears. It 
was very calm, however, and it expressed now only 
the resigned melancholy of old age. She looked at 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


239 


the young girl with an air of infinite reproach ; then 
she bent her head again without speaking. 

“Are you angry with us, then?” 

And as she still remained silent, Pascal inter- 
posed : 

“Are you angry with us, my good Martine?” 

Then the old servant looked up at him with her 
former look of adoration, as if she loved him suffi- 
ciently to endure all and to remain in spite of all. 
At last she spoke. 

“No, I am angry with no one. The master is 
free. It is all right, if he is satisfied.” 

A new life began from this time. Clotilde, who 
in spite of her twenty-five years, had still remained 
childlike, now, under the influence of love, suddenly 
bloomed into exquisite womanhood. Since her 
heart had awakened, the serious and intelligent boy 
that she had looked like, with her round head 
covered with its short curls, had given place to an 
adorable woman, altogether womanly, submissive 
and tender, loving to be loved. Her great charm, 
notwithstanding her learning picked up at random 
from her reading and her work, was her virginal 
naivete , as if her unconscious awaiting of love had 
made her reserve the gift of her whole being to be 
utterly absorbed in the man whom she should love. 
No doubt she had given her love as much through 
gratitude and admiration as through tenderness; 
happy to make him happy ; experiencing a profound 
joy in being no longer only a little girl to be petted, 
but something of his very own which he adored, a 


240 


DOCTOR PA SC A I.. 


precious possession, a thing of grace and joy, which 
he worshiped on bended knees. She still had the 
religious submissiveness of the former devotee, in the 
hands of a master mature and strong, from whom she 
derived consolation and support, retaining, above 
and beyond affection, the sacred awe of the believer 
in the spiritual which she still was. But more than 
all, this woman, so intoxicated with love, was a 
delightful personification of health and gayety ; 
eating with a hearty appetite; having something of 
the valor of her grandfather the soldier; filling the 
house with her swift and graceful movements, with 
the bloom of her satin skin, the slender grace of her 
neck, of all her young form, divinely fresh. 

And Pascal, too, had grown handsome again 
under the influence of love, with the serene beauty 
of a man who had retained his vigor, notwithstand- 
ing his white hairs. His countenance had no longer 
the sorrowful expression which it had worn during 
the months of grief and suffering through which he 
had lately passed ; his eyes, youthful still, had 
recovered their brightness, his features their smiling 
grace; while his white hair and beard grew thicker, 
in a leonine abundance which lent him a youthful 
air. He had kept himself, in his solitary life as a 
passionate worker, so free from vice and dissipation 
that he found now within him a reserve of life and 
vigor eager to expend itself at last. There awoke 
within him new energy, a youthful impetuosity that 
broke forth in gestures and exclamations, in a con- 
tinual need of expansion, of living. Everything 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


241 


wore a new and enchanting aspect to him ; the 
smallest glimpse of sky moved him to wonder; the 
perfume of a simple flower threw him into an 
ecstasy; an everyday expression of affection, worn 
by use, touched him to tears, as if it had sprung 
fresh from the heart and had not been hackneyed 
by millions of lips. Clotilde’s “I love you,” was an 
infinite caress, whose celestial sweetness no human 
being had ever before known. And with health and 
beauty he recovered also his gayety, that tranquil 
gayety which had formerly been inspired by his love 
of life, and which now threw sunshine over his love, 
over everything that made life worth living. 

They two, blooming youth and vigorous maturity, 
so healthy, so gay, so happy, made a radiant couple. 
For a whole month they remained in seclusion, 
not once leaving La Souleiade. The place where 
both now liked to be was the spacious workroom, 
so intimately associated with their habits and their 
past affection. They would spend whole days 
there, scarcely working at all, however. The large 
carved oak press remained with closed doors ; so, too, 
did the bookcases. Books and papers lay undis- 
turbed upon the tables. Like a young married 
couple they were absorbed in their one passion, 
oblivious of their former occupations, oblivious of 
life. The hours seemed all too short to enjoy the 
charm of being together, often seated in the same 
large antique easy-chair, happy in the depths of this 
solitude in which they secluded themselves, in the 
tranquillity of this lofty room, in this domain which 


242 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


was altogether theirs, without luxury and without 
order, full of familiar objects, brightened from 
morning till night by the returning gayety of the 
April sunshine. When, seized with remorse, he 
would talk about working, she would link her supple 
arms through his and laughingly hold him prisoner, 
so that he should not make himself ill again with 
overwork. And downstairs, they loved, too, the 
dining room, so gay with its light panels relieved 
by blue bands, its antique mahogany furniture, its 
large flower pastels, its brass hanging lamp, always 
shining. They ate in it with a hearty appetite and 
they left it, after each meal, only to go upstairs 
again to their dear solitude. 

Then when the house seemed too small, they 
had the garden, all La Souleiade. Spring advanced 
with the advancing sun, and at the end of April the 
roses were beginning to bloom. And what a joy 
was this domain, walled around, where nothing 
from the outside world could trouble them! Hours 
flew by unnoted, as they sat on the terrace facing 
the vast horizon and the shady banks of the Viorne, 
and the slopes of Sainte-Marthe, from the rocky 
bars of the Seille to the valley oT Plassans in the 
dusty distance. There was no shade on the terrace 
but that of the two secular cypresses planted at its 
two extremities, like two enormous green tapers, 
which could be seen three leagues away. At times 
they descended the slope for the pleasure of 
ascending the giant steps, and climbing the low 
walls of uncemented stones which supported the 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


243 


plantations, to see if the stunted olive trees and the 
puny almonds were budding. More often there 
were delightful walks under the delicate needles of 
the pine wood, steeped in sunshine and exhaling a 
strong odor of resin ; endless walks along the wall 
of inclosure, from behind which the only sound they 
could hear was, at rare intervals, the grating noise of 
some cart jolting along the narrow road to Les 
Fenouill&res ; and they spent delightful hours in 
the old threshing yard, where they could see the 
whole horizon, and where they loved to stretch 
themselves, tenderly remembering their former 
tears, when, loving each other unconsciously to 
themselves, they had quarreled under the stars. 
But their favorite retreat, where they always ended 
by losing themselves, was the quincunx of tall plane 
trees, whose branches, now of a tender green, looked 
like lacework. Below, the enormous box trees, the 
old borders of the French garden, of which now 
scarcely a trace remained, formed a sort of labyrinth 
of which they could never find the end. And the 
slender stream of the fountain, with its eternal crys- 
talline murmur, seemed to sing within their hearts. 
They would sit hand in hand beside the mossy 
basin, while the twilight fell around them, their 
forms gradually fading into the shadow of the trees, 
while the water, which they could no longer see, 
sang its flutelike song. 

Up to the middle of May Pascal and Clotilde 
secluded themselves in this way, without even 
crossing the threshold of their retreat. One morn- 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


244 

ing he disappeared and returned an hour later, 
bringing her a pair of diamond earrings which he 
had hurried out to buy, remembering this was her 
birthday. She adored jewels, and the gift aston- 
ished and delighted her. From this time not a 
week passed in which he did not go out once or 
twice in this way to bring her back some present. 
The slightest excuse was sufficient for him — a fete, 
a wish, a simple pleasure. He brought her rings, 
bracelets, a necklace, a slender diadem. He would 
take out the other jewels and please himself by 
putting them all upon her in the midst of their 
laughter. She was like an idol, seated on her chair, 
covered with gold — a band of gold on her hair, gold 
on her bare arms and on her bare throat, all shining 
with gold and precious stones. Her woman’s vanity 
was delightfully gratified by this. She allowed her- 
self to be adored thus, to be adored on bended 
knees, like a divinity, knowing well that this was 
only an exalted form of love. She began at last to 
scold a little, however; to make prudent remon- 
strances; for, in truth, it was an absurdity to bring 
her all these gifts which she must afterward shut up 
in a drawer, without ever wearing them, as she went 
nowhere. 

They were forgotten after the hour of joy and 
gratitude which they gave her in their novelty was 
over. But he would not listen to her, carried away 
by a veritable mania for giving; unable, from the 
moment the idea of giving her an article took 
possession of him, to resist the desire of buying it. 


SOCTOk PASCAL. 


245 


It was a munificence of the heart ; an imperious 
desire to prove to her that he thought of her always ; 
a pride in seeing her the most magnificent, the 
happiest, the most envied of women ; a generosity 
more profound even, which impelled him to despoil 
himself of everything, of his money, of his life. 
And then, what a delight, when he saw he had given 
her a real pleasure, and she threw herself on his 
neck, blushing, thanking him with kisses. After the 
jewels, it was gowns, articles of dress, toilet articles. 
Her room was littered, the drawers were filled to 
overflowing. 

One morning she could not help getting angry. 
He had brought her another ring. 

“Why, I never wear them! And if I did, my 
fingers would be covered to the tips. Be reason- 
able, I beg of you.” 

“Then I have not given you pleasure?” he said 
with confusion. 

She threw her arms about his neck, and assured 
him with tears in her eyes that she was very happy. 
He was so good to her! He was so unwearied in 
his devotion to her! And when, later in the morn- 
ing, h j ventured to speak of making some changes 
in her room, of covering the walls with tapestry, of 
putting down a carpet, she again remonstrated. 

“Oh! no, no! I beg of you. Do not touch my 
old room, so full of memories, where I have grown 
up, where I told you I loved you. I should no 
longer feel myself at home in it.” 

Downstairs, Martine’s obstinate silence con- 


246 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


demned still more strongly these excessive and 
useless expenses. She had adopted a less familial 
attitude, as if, in the new situation, she had fallen 
from her role of housekeeper and friend to her 
former station as servant. Toward Clotilde, espe- 
cially, she changed, treating her like a young lady, 
like a mistress to whom she was less affectionate 
but more obedient than formerly. Two or three 
times, however, she had appeared in the morning 
with her face discolored and her eyes sunken with 
weeping, answering evasively when questioned, say- 
ing that nothing was the matter, that she had taken 
cold. And she never made any remark about the 
gifts with which the drawers were filled. She did not 
even seem to see them, arranging them without a 
word either of praise or dispraise. But her whole 
nature rebelled against this extravagant generosity, 
of which she could never have conceived the possi- 
bility. She protested in her own fashion ; exagger- 
ating her economy and reducing still further the 
expenses of the housekeeping, which she now 
conducted on so narrow a scale that she retrenched 
even in the smallest expenses. For instance, she 
took only two-thirds of the milk which she had been 
in the habit of taking, and she served sweet dishes 
only on Sundays. Pascal and Clotilde, without 
venturing to complain, laughed between themselves 
at this parsimony, repeating the jests which had 
amused them for ten years past, saying that after 
dressing the vegetables she strained them in the 
colander, in order to save the butter for future use. 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


247 


But this quarter she insisted upon rendering an 
account. She was in the habit of going every three 
months to Master Grandguillot, the notary, to 
receive the fifteen hundred francs income, of which 
she disposed afterward according to her judgment, 
entering the expenses in a book which the doctor 
had years ago ceased to verify. She brought it to 
him now and insisted upon his looking over it. He 
excused himself, saying that it was all right. 

“The thing is, monsieur,” she said, “that this time 
I have been able to put some money aside. Yes, 
three hundred francs. Here they are/’ 

He looked at her in amazement. Generally she 
just made both ends meet. By what miracle of 
stinginess had she been able to save such a sum? 

“Ah ! my poor Martine,” he said at last, laughing, 
“that is the reason, then, that we have been eating 
so many potatoes of late. You are a pearl of 
economy, but indeed you must treat us a little 
better in the future.” 

This discreet reproach wounded her so profoundly 
that she allowed herself at last to say : 

“Well, monsieur, when there is so much extrava- 
gance on the one hand, it is well to be prudent on 
the other.” 

He understood the allusion, but instead of being 
angry, he was amused by the lesson. 

“Ah, ah! it is you who are examining my ac- 
counts! But you know very well, Martine, that I, 
too, have my savings laid by.” 

He alluded to the money which he still received 


248 DOCTOk PASCAL. 

occasionally from his patients, and which he threw 
into a drawer of his writing desk. For more than 
sixteen years past he had put into this drawer every 
year, about four thousand francs, which would have 
amounted to a little fortune if he had not taken 
from it, from day to day, without counting them, 
considerable sums for his experiments and his 
whims. All the money for the presents came out 
of this drawer, which he now opened continually. 
He thought that it would never be empty; he had 
been so accustomed to take from it whatever he 
required that it had never occurred to him to fear 
that he would ever come to the bottom of it. 

“One may very well have a little enjoyment out 
of one’s savings,” he said gayly. “Since it is you 
who go to the notary’s, Martine, you are not igno- 
rant that I have my income apart.” 

Then she said, with the colorless voice of the 
miser who is haunted by the dread of an impending 
disaster : 

“And what would you do if you hadn’t it?” 

Pascal looked at her in astonishment, and con- 
tented himself with answering with a shrug, for the 
possibility of such a misfortune had never even 
entered his mind. He fancied that avarice was 
turning her brain, and he laughed over the incident 
that evening with Clotilde. 

In Plassans, roo, the presents were the cause of 
endless gossip. The rumor of what was going on 
at La Souleiade, this strange and sudden passion, 
had spread, no one could tell how, by that force of 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


249 


expansion which sustains curiosity, always on the 
alert in small towns. The servant certainly had not 
spoken, but her air was perhaps sufficient; words 
perhaps had dropped from her involuntarily; the 
lovers might have been watched over the walls. 
And then came the buying of the presents, confirm- 
ing the reports and exaggerating them. When the 
doctor, in the early morning, scoured the streets and 
visited the jeweler’s and the dressmaker’s, eyes spied 
him from the windows, his smallest purchases were 
watched, all the town knew in the evening that he 
had given her a silk bonnet, a bracelet set with 
sapphires. And all this was turned into a scandal. 
This uncle in love with his niece, committing a 
young man’s follies for her, adorning* her like a holy 
Virgin. The most extraordinary stories began to 
circulate, and people pointed to La Souleiade as 
they passed by. 

But old Mme. Rougon was, of all persons, the 
most bitterly indignant. She had ceased going to 
her son’s house when she learned that Clotilde’s 
marriage with Dr. Ramond had been broken off. 
They had made sport of her. They did nothing to 
please her, and she wished to show how deep her 
displeasure was. Then a full month after the 
rupture, during which she had understood nothing 
of the pitying looks, the discreet condolences, the 
vague smiles which met her everywhere, she learned 
everything with a suddenness that stunned her. 
She, who, at the time of Pascal’s illness, in her 
mortification at the idea of again becoming the talk 


2 5 O 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


of the town through that ugly story, had raised such 
a storm ! It was far worse this time; the height 
of scandal, a love affair for people to regale them- 
selves with. The Rougon legend was again in 
peril ; her unhappy son was decidedly doing his best 
to find some way to destroy the family glory won 
with so much difficulty. So that in her anger she, 
who had made herself the guardian of this glory, 
resolving to purify the legend by every means in 
her power, put on her hat one morning and hurried 
to La Souleiade with the youthful vivacity of her 
eighty years. 

Pascal, whom the rupture with his mother en- 
chanted, was fortunately not at home, having gone 
out an hour before to look for a silver buckle which 
he had thought of for a belt. And Felicite fell 
upon Clotilde as the latter was finishing her toilet, 
her arms bare, her hair loose, looking as fresh and 
smiling as a rose. 

The first shock was rude. The old lady unbur- 
dened her mind, grew indignant, spoke of the 
scandal they were giving. Suddenly her anger 
vanished. She looked at the young girl, and she 
thought her adorable. In her heart she was not 
surprised at what was going on. She laughed at it, 
all she desired was that it should end in a correct 
fashion, so as to silence evil tongues. And she 
cried with a conciliating air: 

“Get married then ! Why do you not get 
married?” 

Clotilde remained silent for a moment, surprised. 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


251 


She had not thought of marriage. Then she smiled 
again. 

“No doubt we will get married, grandmother. 
But later on, there is no hurry.” 

Old Mme. Rougon went away, obliged to be 
satisfied with this vague promise. 

It was at this time that Pascal and Clotilde ceased 
to seclude themselves. Not through any spirit of 
bravado, not because they wished to answer ugly 
rumors by making a display of their happiness, but 
as a natural amplification of their joy; their love 
had slowly acquired the need of expansion and of' 
space, at first beyond the house, then beyond the 
garden, into the town, as far as the whole vast 
horizon. It filled everything; it took in the whole 
world. 

The doctor then tranquilly resumed his visits, and 
he took the young girl with him. They walked 
together along the promenades, along the streets, 
she on his arm, in a light gown, with flowers in her 
hat, • he buttoned up in his coat with his broad- 
brimmed hat. He was all white; she all blonde. 
They walked with their heads high, erect and smil- 
ing, radiating such happiness that they seemed to 
walk in a halo. At first the excitement was extra- 
ordinary. The shopkeepers came and stood at their 
doors, the women leaned out of the windows, the 
passers-by stopped to look after them. People 
whispered and laughed and pointed to them. Then 
they were so handsome ; he superb and triumphant, 
she so youthful, so submissive, and so proud, that 


252 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


an involuntary indulgence gradually gained on every, 
one. People could not help defending them and 
loving them, and they ended by smiling on them in 
a delightful contagion of tenderness. A charm 
emanated from them which brought back all hearts 
to them. The new town, with its bourgeois popula- 
tion of functionaries and townspeople who had 
grown wealthy, was the last conquest. But the 
Quartier St. Marc, in spite of its austerity, showed 
itself at once kind and discreetly tolerant when 
they walked along its deserted grass-worn sidewalks, 
beside the antique houses, now closed and silent, 
which exhaled the evaporated perfume of the loves 
of other days. But it was the old quarter, more 
especially, that promptly received them with cordi- 
ality, this quarter of which the common people, 
instinctively touched, felt the grace of the legend, 
the profound myth of the couple, the beautiful 
young girl supporting the royal and rejuvenated 
master. The doctor was adored here for his good- 
ness, and his companion quickly became popular, 
and was greeted with tokens of admiration and 
approval as soon as she appeared. They, meantime 
if they had seemed ignorant of the former hostility, 
now divined easily the forgiveness and the indulgent 
tenderness which surrounded them, and this made 
them more beautiful ; their happiness charmed the 
entire town. 

One afternoon, as Pascal and Clotilde turned the 
corner of the Rue de la Banne, they perceived Dr. 
Ramond on the opposite side of the street. It had 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


253 


chanced that they had learned the day before that 
he had asked and had obtained the hand of Mile. 
Leveque, the. advocate’s daughter. It was certainly 
the most sensible course he could have taken, for 
his business interests made it advisable that he 
should marry, and the young girl, who was very 
pretty and very rich, loved him. He, too, would 
certainly love her in time. Therefore Clotilde joy- 
fully smiled her congratulations to him as a sincere 
friend. Pascal saluted him with an affectionate 
gesture. For a moment Ramond, a little moved 
by the meeting, stood perplexed. His first impulse 
seemed to have been to cross over to them. But a 
feeling of delicacy must have prevented him, the 
thought that it would be brutal to interrupt their 
dream, to break in upon this solitude a deux , in 
which they moved, even amid the elbowings of the 
street. And he contented himself with a friendly 
salutation, a smile in which he forgave them 
their happiness. This was very pleasant for all 
three. 

At this time Clotilde amused herself for several 
days by painting a large pastel representing the 
tender scene of old King David and Abishag, the 
young Shunammite. It was a dream picture, one 
of those fantastic compositions into which her other 
self, her romantic self, put her love of the mysteri- 
ous. Against a background of flowers thrown on 
the canvas, flowers that looked like a shower of 
stats, of barbaric richness, the old king stood facing 
the spectator, his hand resting on the bare shoulder 


254 


DOCTOR RASCAL . 


of Abishag. He was attired sumptuously in a robe 
heavy with precious stones, that fell in straight 
folds, and he wore the royal fillet on his snowy 
locks. But she was more sumptuous still, with only 
the lilylike satin of her skin, her tall, slender figure, 
her round, slender throat, her supple arms, divinely 
graceful. He reigned over, he leaned, as a powerful 
and beloved master, on this subject, chosen from 
among all others, so proud of having been chosen, 
so rejoiced to give to her king the rejuvenating gift 
of her youth. All her pure and triumphant beauty 
expressed the serenity of her submission, the tran- 
quillity with which she gave herself, before the 
assembled people, in the full light of day. And he 
w'as very great and she was very fair, and there 
radiated from both a starry radiance. 

Up to the last moment Clotilde had left the faces 
of the two figures vaguely outlined in a sort of mist. 
Pascal, standing behind her, jested with her to hide 
his emotion, for he fancied he divined her intention. 
And it was as he thought ; she finished the faces 
with a few strokes of the crayon — old King David 
was he, and she was Abishag, the Shunammite. 
But they were enveloped in a dreamlike brightness, 
it was themselves deified; the one with hair all 
white, the other with hair all blond, covering them 
like an imperial mantle, with features lengthened 
by ecstasy, exalted to the bliss of angels, with the 
glance and the smile of immortal youth. 

“Ah, dear!” he cried, “you have made us too 
beautiful; you have wandered off again to dream- 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


2 55 


land — yes, as in the days, do you remember, when 
I used to scold you for putting there all the 
fantastic flowers of the Unknown?” 

And he pointed to the walls, on which bloomed 
the fantastic parterre of the old pastels, flowers not 
of the earth, grown in the soil of paradise. 

But she protested gayly. 

“Too beautiful? We could not be too beautiful! 
I assure you it is thus that I picture us to myself, 
thus that I see us; and thus it is that we are. 
There! see if it is not the pure reality.” 

She took the old fifteenth century Bible which 
was beside her, and showed him the simple wood 
engraving. 

“You see it is exactly the same.” 

He smiled gently at this tranquil and extraordinary 
affirmation. 

“Oh, you laugh, you look only at the details of 
the picture. It is the spirit which it is necessary to 
penetrate. And look at the other engravings, it is 
the same theme in all — Abraham and Hagar, Ruth 
and Boaz. And you see they are all handsome and 
happy.” • 

Then they ceased to laugh, leaning over the old 
Bible whose pages she turned with her white fingers, 
he standing behind her, his white beard mingling 
with her blond, youthful tresses. 

Suddenly he whispered to her softly : 

“But you, so young, do you never regret that you 
have chosen me — me who am so old, as old as the 
world?” 


256 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


She gave a start of surprise, and turning round 
looked at him. 

“You old ! No, you are young, younger than I !”. 

And she laughed so joyously that he, too, could 
not help smiling. But he insisted a little tremu- 
lously : 

“You do not answer me. Do you not sometimes 
desire a younger lover, you who are so youthful?” 

She put up her lips and kissed him, saying in a 
low voice : 

“I have but one desire, to be loved — loved as you 
love me, above and beyond everything.” 

The day on which Martine saw the pastel nailed 
to the wall, she looked at it a moment in silence, 
then she made the sign of the cross, but whether it 
was because she had seen God or the devil, no one 
could say. A few days before Easter she had asked 
Clotilde if she would not accompany her to church, 
and the latter having made a sign in the negative, 
she departed for an instant from the deferential 
silence which she now habitually maintained. Of 
all the new things which astonished her in the 
house, what most astonished her was the sudden 
irreligiousness of her young mistress. So she 
allowed herself to resume her former tone of 
remonstrance, and to scold her as she used to do 
when she was a little girl and refused to say her 
prayers. “Had she no longer the fear of the Lord 
before her, then? Did she no longer tremble at the 
idea of going to hell, to burn there forever?” 

Clotilde could not suppress a smile. 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


257 


“Oh, hell! you know that it has never troubled 
me a great deal. But you are mistaken if you think 
I am no longer religious. If I have left off going to 
church it is because I perform my devotions else- 
where, that is all.” 

Martine looked at her, open-mouthed, not com- 
prehending her. It was all over ; mademoiselle was 
indeed lost. And she never again asked her to 
accompany her to St. Saturnin. But her own devo- 
tion increased until it at last became a mania. She 
was no longer to be met, as before, with the eternal 
stocking in her hand which she knitted even when 
walking, when not occupied in her household duties. 
Whenever she had a moment to spare, she ran to 
church and remained there, repeating endless 
prayers. One day when old Mme. Rougon, always 
on the alert, found her behind a pillar, an hour after 
she had seen her there before, Martine excused 
herself, blushing like a servant who had been caught 
idling, saying: 

“I was praying for monsieur.” 

Meanwhile Pascal and Clotilde enlarged still more 
their domain, taking longer and longer walks every 
day, extending them now outside the town into the 
open country. One afternoon, as they were going 
to La Seguiranne, they were deeply moved, pass- 
ing by the melancholy fields where the enchanted 
gardens of Le Paradou had formerly extended. 
The vision of Albine rose before them. Pascal saw 
her again blooming like the spring, in the reju- 
venation which this living flower had brought him 


2 5 8 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


too, feeling the pressure of this pure arm against 
his heart. Never could he have believed, he who 
had already thought himself very old when he used 
to enter this garden to give a smile to the little 
fairy within, that she would have been dead for 
years when life, the good mother, should bestow 
upon him the gift of so fresh a spring, sweetening 
his declining years. And Clotilde, having felt the 
vision rise before them, lifted up her face to his in 
a renewed longing for tenderness. She was Afbine, 
the eternal lover. He kissed her on the lips, and 
though no word had been uttered, the level fields 
sown with corn and oats, where Le Paradou had 
once rolled its billows of luxuriant verdure, thrilled 
in sympathy. 

Pascal and Clotilde were now walking along the 
dusty road, through the bare and arid country. 
They loved this sun-scorched land, these fields 
thinly planted with puny almond trees and dwarf 
olives, these stretches of bare hills dotted with 
country houses, that showed on them like pale 
patches accentuated by the dark bars of the secular 
cypresses. It was like an antique landscape, one of 
those classic landscapes represented in the paintings 
of the old schools, with harsh coloring and w r ell 
balanced and majestic lines. All the ardent sun- 
shine of successive summers that had parched this 
land flowed through their veins, and lent them a 
new beauty and animation, as they walked under 
the sky forever blue, glowing with the clear flame of 
eternal love. She, protected from the sun by her 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


259 


straw hat, bloomed and luxuriated in this bath of 
light like a tropical flower, while he, in his renewed 
youth, felt the burning sap of the soil ascend into 
his veins in a flood of virile joy. 

This walk to La Seguiranne had been an idea of 
the doctor’s, who had learned through Aunt Dieu- 
donne of the approaching marriage of Sophie to a 
young miller of the neighborhood ; and he desired 
to see if everyone was well and happy in this retired 
corner. All at once they were refreshed by a 
delightful coolness as they entered the avenue of 
tall green oaks. On either side the springs, the 
mothers of these giant shade trees, flowed on in their 
eternal course. And when they reached the house 
of the shrew they came, as chance would have it, 
upon the two lovers, Sophie and her miller, kissing 
each other beside the well; for the girl’s aunt had 
just gone down to the lavatory behind the willows 
of the Viorne. Confused, the couple stood in 
blushing silence. But the doctor and his compan- 
ion laughed indulgently, and the lovers, reassured, 
told them that the marriage was set for St. John’s 
Day, which was a long way off, to be sure, but 
which would come all the same. Sophie, saved 
from the hereditary malady, had improved in health 
and beauty, and was growing as strong as one of 
the trees that stood with their feet in the moist 
grass beside the springs, and their heads bare to the 
sunshine. Ah, the vast, glowing sky, what life it 
breathed into all created things! She had but one 
grief, and tears came to her eyes when she spoke of 


26 o 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


her brother Valentin, who perhaps would not live 
through the week. She had had news of him the 
day before; he was past hope. And the doctor was 
obliged to prevaricate a little to console her, for he 
himself expected hourly the inevitable termination. 
When he and his companion left La Seguiranne 
they returned slowly to Plassans, touched by this 
happy, healthy love saddened by the chill of death. 

In the old quarter a woman whom Pascal was 
attending informed him that Valentin had just died. 
Two of the neighbors were obliged to take away 
La Guiraude, who, half-crazed, clung, shrieking, to 
her son’s body. The doctor entered the house, 
leaving Clotilde outside. At last, they again took 
their way to La Souleiade in silence. Since Pascal 
had resumed his visits he seemed to make them 
only through professional duty; he no longer 
became enthusiastic about the miracles wrought by 
his treatment. But as far as Valentin’s death was 
concerned, he was surprised that it had not occurred 
before; he was convinced that he had prolonged the 
patient’s life for at least a year. In spite of the 
extraordinary results which he had obtained at first, 
he knew well that death was the inevitable end. 
That he had held it in check for months ought then 
to have consoled him and soothed his remorse, still 
unassuaged, for having involuntarily caused the 
death of Lafouasse, a few weeks sooner than it 
would otherwise have occurred. But this did not 
seem to be the case, and his brow was knitted in a 
frown as they returned to their beloved solitude. 


Doctor pascal. 


261 


But there a new emotion awaited him; sitting under 
the plane trees, whither Martine had sent him, he 
saw Sarteur, the hatter, the inmate of the Tulettes 
whom he had been so long treating by his hypoder- 
mic injections, and the experiment so zealously 
continued seemed to have succeeded. The injec- 
tions of nerve substance had evidently given 
strength to his will, since the madman was here, 
having left the asylum that morning, declaring that 
he no longer had any attacks, that he was entirely 
cured of the homicidal mania that impelled him to 
throw himself upon any passer-by to strangle him. 
The doctor looked at him as he spoke. He was a 
small dark man, with a retreating forehead and 
aquiline features, with one cheek perceptibly larger 
than the other. He was perfectly quiet and rational, 
and filled with so lively a gratitude that he kissed 
his savior’s hands. The doctor could not help being 
greatly affected by all this, and he dismissed the 
man kindly, advising him to return to his life of 
labor, which was the best hygiene, physical and 
moral. Then he recovered his calmness and sat 
down to table, talking gayly of other matters. 

Clotilde looked at him with astonishment and 
even with a little indignation. 

“What is the matter, master?” she said. “You 
are no longer satisfied with yourself.” 

“Oh, with myself I am never satisfied !” he an- 
swered jestingly. “And with medicine, you know — 
it is according to the day.” 

It was on this night that they had their first 


262 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


quarrel. She was angry with him because he no 
longer had any pride in his profession. She re- 
turned to her complaint of the afternoon, reproach- 
ing him for not taking more credit to himself for the 
cure of Sarteur, and even for the prolongation of 
Valentin’s life. It was she who now had a passion 
for his fame. She reminded him of his cures; had 
he not cured himself? Could he deny the efficacy 
of his treatment? A thrill ran through him as he 
recalled the great dream which he had once cher- 
ished — to combat debility, the sole cause of disease; 
to cure suffering humanity; to make a higher, a 
healthy humanity ; to hasten the coming of happi- 
ness, the future kingdom of perfection and felicity, 
by intervening and giving health to all ! And he 
possessed the liquor of life, the universal panacea 
which opened up this immense hope ! 

Pascal was silent for a moment. Then he mur- 
mured : 

“It is true. I cured myself, I have cured others, 
and I still think that my injections are efficacious in 
many cases. I do not deny medicine. Remorse 
for a deplorable accident, like that of Lafouasse, 
does not render me unjust. Besides, work has been 
my passion, it is in work that I have up to this time 
spent my energies; it was in wishing to prove to 
myself the possibility of making decrepit humanity 
one day strong and intelligent that I came near 
dying lately. Yes, a dream, a beautiful dream !” 

“No, no! a reality, the reality of your genius, 
master !” 


DOCTOR PASCAL *03 

Then, lowering his voice almost to, a whisper, he 
breathed this confession : 

“Listen, I am going to say to you what I would 
say to no one else in the world, what I would not 
say to myself aloud. To correct nature, to inter- 
fere, in order to modify it and thwart it in its 
purpose, is this a laudable task? To cure the 
individual, to retard his death, for his personal 
pleasure, to prolong his existence, doubtless to the 
injury of the species, is not this to defeat the aims 
of nature? And have we the right to desire a 
stronger, a healthier humanity, modeled after our 
idea of health and strength? What have we to do 
in the matter? Why should we interfere in this work 
of life, neither the means nor the end of which are 
known to us? Perhaps everything is as it ought to 
be. Perhaps we should risk killing love, genius, life 
itself. Remember, I make the confession to you 
alone ; but doubt has taken possession of me, I 
tremble at the thought of my twentieth century 
alchemy. I have come to believe that it is greater 
and wiser to allow evolution to take its course.” 

He paused ; then he added so softly that she 
could scarcely hear him : 

“Do you know that instead of nerve-substance I 
often use only water with my patients. You no 
longer hear me grinding for days at a time. I told 
you that I had some of the liquor in reserve. 
Water soothes them, this is no doubt simply a 
mechanical effect. Ah! to soothe, to prevent 
suffering — that indeed I still desire ! It is perhaps 


264 


DOCTOR PASCAL 


my greatest weakness, but I cannot bear to see 
anyone suffer. Suffering puts me beside myself, it 
seems a monstrous and useless cruelty of nature. I 
practice now only to prevent suffering.” 

“Then, master,” she asked, in the same indistinct 
murmur, “if you no longer desire to cure, do you 
still think everything must be told? For the fright- 
ful necessity of displaying the wounds of humanity 
had no other excuse than the hope of curing them.” 

“Yes, yes, it is necessary to know, in every case, 
and to conceal nothing; to tell everything regarding 
things and individuals. Happiness is no longer 
possible in ignorance; certainty alone makes life 
tranquil. When people know more they will doubt- 
less accept everything. Do you not comprehend 
that to desire to cure everything, to regenerate 
everything is a false ambition inspired by our ego- 
tism, a revolt against life, which we declare to be 
bad, because we judge it from the point of view of 
self-interest? I know that I am more tranquil, that 
my intellect has broadened and deepened ever since 
I have held evolution in respect. It is my love of 
life which triumphs, even to the extent of not ques- 
tioning its purpose, to the extent of confiding abso- 
lutely in it, of losing myself in it, without wishing 
to remake it according to my own conception of 
good and evil. Life alone is sovereign, life alone 
knows its aim and its end. I can only try to know 
it in order to live it as it should be lived. And this 
I have understood only since I have possessed your 
love. Before I possessed it I sought the truth else- 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


265 

where, I struggled with the fixed idea of saving the 
world. You have come, and life is full; the world 
is saved every hour by love, by the immense and 
incessant labor of all that live and love throughout 
space. Impeccable life, omnipotent life, immortal 
life!” 

They continued to talk together in low tones for 
some time longer, planning an idyllic life, a calm and 
healthful existence in the country. It was in this 
simple prescription of an invigorating environment 
that the experiments of the physician ended. He 
exclaimed against cities. People could be well and 
happy only in the country, in the sunshine, on the 
condition of renouncing money, ambition, even the 
proud excesses of intellectual labor. They should 
do nothing but live and love, cultivate the soil, and 
bring up their children. 


IX. 


Dr. Pascal then resumed his professional visits 
in the town and the surrounding country. And he 
was generally accompanied by Clotilde, who went 
with him into the houses of the poor, where she, 
too, brought health and cheerfulness. 

But, as he had one night confessed to her in 
secret, his visits were now only visits of relief and 
consolation. If he had before practiced with repug- 
nance it was because he had felt how vain was medi- 
cal science. Empiricism disheartened him. From 
the moment that medicine ceased to be an experi- 
mental science and became an art, he was filled with 
disquiet at the thought of the infinite variety of 
diseases and of their remedies, according to the con- 
stitution of the patient. Treatment changed with 
every new hypothesis; how many people, then, must 
the methods now abandoned have killed ! The per- 
spicacity of the physician became everything, the 
healer was only a happily endowed diviner, himself 
groping in the dark and effecting cures through his 
fortunate endowment. And this explained why he 
had given up his patients almost altogether, after a 
dozen years of practice, to devote himself entirely 
to study. Then, when his great labors on heredity 
had restored to him for a time the hope of interven- 

266 


DOCTOR RASCAL . 


267 


ing and curing disease by his hypodermic injections, 
he had become again enthusiastic, until the day 
when his faith in life, after having impelled him 
to aid its action in this way, by restoring the vital 
forces, became still broader and gave him the higher 
conviction that life was self-sufficing, that it was 
the only giver of health and strength, in spite of 
everything. And he continued to visit, with his 
tranquil smile, only those of his patients who clam- 
ored for him loudly, and who found themselves 
miraculously relieved when he injected into them 
only pure water. 

Clotilde now sometimes allowed herself to jest 
about these hypodermic injections. She was still at 
heart, however, a fervent worshiper of his skill ; and 
she said jestingly that if he performed miracles as he 
did it was because he had in himself the godlike 
power to do so. Then he would reply jestingly, 
attributing to her the efficacy of their common 
visits, saying that he cured no one now when she 
was absent, that it was she who brought the breath 
of life, the unknown and necessary force from the 
Beyond. So that the rich people, the bourgeois , 
whose houses she did not enter, continued to groan 
without his being able to relieve them. And this 
affectionate dispute diverted them ; they set out 
each time as if for new discoveries, they exchanged 
glances of kindly intelligence with the sick. Ah, 
this wretched suffering which revolted them, and 
which was now all they went to combat ; how happy 
they were when they thought it vanquished ! They 


268 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


were divinely recompensed when they saw the cold 
sweats disappear, the moaning lips become stilled, 
the deathlike faces recover animation. It was 
assuredly the love which they brought to this 
humble, suffering humanity that produced the alle- 
viation. 

“To die is nothing; that is in the natural order of 
things,” Pascal would often say. “But why suffer? 
It is cruel and unnecessary!” 

One afternoon the doctor was going with the 
young girl to the little village of Sainte-Marthe to 
see a patient, and at the station, for they were going 
by train, so as to spare Bonhomme, they had a 
rencounter. The train which they were waiting for 
was from the Tulettes. Sainte-Marthe was the first 
station in the opposite direction, going to Marseilles. 
When the train arrived, they hurried on board and, 
opening the door of a compartment which they 
thought empty, they saw old Mme. Rougon about 
to leave it. She did not speak to them, but passing 
them by, sprang down quickly in spite of her age, 
and walked away with a stiff and haughty air. 

“It is the ist of July,” said Clotilde when the 
train had started. “Grandmother is returning from 
the Tulettes, after making her monthly visit to Aunt 
Dide. Did you see the glance she cast at me?” 

Pascal was at heart glad of the quarrel with his 
mother, which freed him from the continual annoy- 
ance of her visits. 

“Bah !” he said simply, “when people cannot agree 
it is better for them not to see each other.” 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 269 

But the young girl remained troubled and 
thoughtful. After a few moments she said in an 
undertone : 

"I thought her changed— looking paler. And did 
you notice? she who is usually so carefully dressed 
had only one glove on — a yellow glove, on the right 
hand. I don’t know why it was, but she made me 
feel sick at heart.” 

Pascal, who was also disturbed, made a vague 
gesture. His mother would no doubt grow old at 
last, like everybody else. But she was very active, 
very full of fire still. She was thinking, he said, of 
bequeathing her fortune to the town of Plassans, 
to build a house of refuge, which should bear the 
name of Rougon. Both had recovered their gayety 
when he cried suddenly: 

“ Why, it is to-morrow that you and I are to go 
to the Tulettes to see our patients. And you 
know that I promised to take Charles to Uncle 
Macquart’s.” 

P'elicite was in fact returning from the Tulettes, 
where she went regularly on the first of every month 
to inquire after Aunt Dide. For many years past 
she had taken a keen interest in the madwoman’s 
health, amazed to see her lasting so long, and 
furious with her for persisting in living so far beyond 
the common term of life, until she had become a 
very prodigy of longevity. What a relief, the fine 
morning on which they should put under ground 
this troublesome witness of the past, this specter of 
expiation and of waiting, who brought living before 


s>70 DOCTOR RASCAL. 

her the abominations of the family ! When so 
many others had been taken she, who was demented 
and who had only a spark of life left in her eyes, 
seemed forgotten. On this day she had found her 
as usual, skeleton-like, stiff and erect in her arm- 
chair. As the keeper said, there was now no reason 
why she should ever die. She was a hundred and 
five years old. 

When she left the asylum Felicite was furious. 
She thought of Uncle Macquart. Another who 
troubled her, who persisted in living with exasper- 
ating obstinacy! Although he was only eighty-four 
years old, three years older than herself, she 
thought him ridiculously aged, past the allotted 
term of life. And a man who led so dissipated a 
life, who had gone to bed dead drunk every night for 
the last sixty years ! The good and the sober were 
taken away ; he flourished in spite of everything, 
blooming with health and gayety. In days past, 
just after he had settled at the Tulettes, she had 
made him presents of wines, liqueurs, and brandy, in 
the unavowed hope of ridding the family of a fellow 
who was really disreputable, and from whom they 
had nothing to expect but annoyance and shame. 
But she had soon perceived that all this liquor 
served, on the contrary, to keep up his health and 
spirits and his sarcastic humor, and she had left off 
making him presents, seeing that he throve on what 
she had hoped would prove a poison to him. She 
had cherished a deadly hatred toward him since 
then. She would have killed him if she had dared, 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


271 


every time she saw him, standing firmly on his 
drunken legs, and laughing at her to her face, know- 
ing well that she was watching for his death, and 
triumphant because he did not give her the pleasure 
of burying with him all the old dirty linen of the 
family, the blood and mud of the two conquests of 
Plassans. 

“You see, Felicite,” he would often say to her 
with his air of wicked mockery, “I am here to take 
care of the old mother, and the day on which we 
both make up our minds to die it will be through 
compliment to you — yes, simply to spare you the 
trouble of running to see us so good-naturedly, in 
this way, every month.” 

Generally she did not now give herself the disap- 
pointment of going to Macquart’s, but inquired for 
him at the asylum. But on this occasion, having 
learned there that he was passing through an extra- 
ordinary attack of drunkenness, not having drawn a 
sober breath for a fortnight, and so intoxicated that 
he was probably unable to leave the house, she was 
seized with the curiosity to learn for herself what 
his condition really was. And as she was going 
back to the station, she went out of her way in 
order to stop at Macquart’s house. 

The day was superb — a warm and brilliant sum- 
mer day. On either side of the path which she had 
taken, she saw the fields that she had given him in 
former days — all this fertile land, the price of his 
secrecy and his good behavior. Before her appeared 
the house, with its pink tiles and its bright yellow 


272 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


walls, looking gay in the sunshine. Under the 
ancient mulberry trees on the terrace, she enjoyed 
the delightful coolness and the beautiful view. 
What a pleasant and safe retreat, what a happy 
solitude was this for an old man to end in joy and 
peace a long and well-spent life! 

But she did not see him, she did not hear him. 
The silence was profound. The only sound to be 
heard was the humming of the bees circling around 
the tall marshmallows. And on the terrace there 
was nothing to be seen but a little yellow dog, 
stretched at full length on the bare ground, seeking 
the coolness of the shade. He raised his head 
growling, about to bark, but, recognizing the visitor, 
he lay down again quietly. 

Then, in this peaceful and sunny solitude she was 
seized with a strange chill, and she called : 

“Macquart ! Macquart !” 

The door of the house under the mulberry trees 
stood wide open. But she did not dare to go in ; 
this empty house with its wide-open door gave her 
a vague uneasiness. And she called again : 

“Macquart! Macquart!” 

Not a sound, not a breath. Profound silence 
reigned again, but the humming of the bees circling 
around the tall marshmallows sounded louder than 
before. 

At last Felicity, ashamed of her fears, summoned 
courage to enter. The door on the left of the hall, 
opening into the kitchen, where Uncle Macquart 
generally sat, was closed. She pushed it open, but 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


2 73 


she could distinguish nothing at first, as the blinds 
had been closed, probably in order to shut out the 
heat. Her first sensation was one of choking, 
caused by an overpowering odor of alcohol which 
filled the room ; every article of furniture seemed 
to exude this odor, the whole house was impreg- 
nated with it. At last, when her eyes had become 
accustomed to the semi-obscurity, she perceived 
Macquart. He was seated at the table, on which 
were a glass and a bottle of spirits of thirty-six 
degrees, completely empty. Settled in his chair, he 
was sleeping profoundly, dead drunk. This spec- 
tacle revived her anger and contempt. 

“Come, Macquart,” she cried, “is it not vile and 
senseless to put one’s self in such a state ! Wake 
up, I say, this is shameful !” 

His sleep was so profound that she could not 
even hear him breathing. In vain she raised her 
voice, and slapped him smartly on the hands. 

“Macquart! Macquart! Macquart! Ah, faugh! 
You are disgusting, my dear!” 

Then she left him, troubling herself no further 
about him, and walked around the room, evidently 
seeking something. Coming down the dusty road 
from the asylum she had been seized with a consum- 
ing thirst, and she wished to get a glass of water. 
Her gloves embarrassed her, and she took them off 
and put them on a corner of the table. Then she 
succeeded in finding the jug, and she washed a glass 
and filled it to the brim, and was about to empty it 
when she saw an extraordinary sight — a sight which 


274 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


agitated her so greatly that she set the glass down 
again beside her gloves, without drinking. 

By degrees she had begun to see objects more 
clearly in. the room, which was lighted dimly by a 
few stray sunbeams that filtered through the cracks 
of the old shutters. She now saw Uncle Macquart 
distinctly, neatly dressed in a blue cloth suit, as 
usual, and on his head the eternal fur cap which he 
wore from one year’s end to the other. He had 
grown stout during the last five or six years, and he 
looked like a veritable mountain of flesh overlaid 
with rolls of fat. And she noticed that he must 
have fallen asleep while smoking, for his pipe — a 
short black pipe — had fallen into his lap. Then she 
stood still, stupefied with amazement — the burning 
tobacco had been scattered in the fall, and the cloth 
of the trousers had caught fire, and through a hole 
in the stuff, as large already as a hundred-sous 
piece, she saw the bare thigh, whence issued a little 
blue flame. 

At first Felicity had thought that it was linen — 
the drawers or the shirt — that was burning. But 
soon doubt was no longer possible, she saw dis- 
tinctly the bare flesh and the little blue flame 
issuing from it, lightly dancing, like a flame wan- 
dering over the surface of a vessel of lighted alcohol. 
It was as yet scarcely higher than the flame of a 
night light, pale and soft, and so unstable that the 
slightest breath of air caused it to change its place. 
But it increased and* spread rapidly, and the skin 
cracked and the fat began to melt. 


doctor pascal. 


275 


An involuntary cry escaped from F61icit6’s 
throat. 

“Macquart! Macquart!” 

But still he did not stir. His insensibility must 
have been complete ; intoxication must have pro- 
duced a sort of coma, in which there was an absolute 
paralysis of sensation, for he was living, his breast 
could be seen rising and falling, in slow and even 
respiration. 

“Macquart! Macquart!” 

Now the fat was running through the cracks of 
the skin, feeding the flame, which was invading the 
abdomen. And F£licit6 comprehended vaguely 
that Uncle Macquart was burning before her like a 
sponge soaked with brandy. He had, indeed, been 
saturated with it for years past, and of the strongest 
and most inflammable kind. He would no doubt 
soon be blazing from head to foot, like a bowl of 
punch. 

Then she ceased to try to awaken him, since he 
was sleeping so soundly. For a full minute she had 
the courage to look at him, awe-stricken, but gradu- 
ally coming to a determination. Her hands how- 
ever, began to tremble, with a little shiver which 
she could not control. She was choking, and taking 
up the glass of water again with both hands, she 
emptied it at a draught. And she was going away 
on tiptoe, when she remembered her gloves. She 
went back, groped for them anxiously on the table 
and, as she thought, picked them both up. Then 
she left the room, closing the door behind her care- 


276 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


fully, and as gently as if she were afraid of disturb- 
ing someone. 

When she found herself once more on the terrace, 
in the cheerful sunshine and the pure air, in face of 
the vast horizon bathed in light, she heaved a sigh 
of relief. The country was deserted ; no one could 
have seen her entering or leaving the house. Only 
the yellow dog was still stretched there, and he did 
not even deign to look up. And she went away 
with her quick, short step, her youthful figure lightly 
swaying. A hundred steps away, an irresistible 
impulse compelled her to turn round to give a last 
look at the house, so tranquil and so cheerful on the 
hillside, in the declining light of the beautiful day. 

Only when she was in the train and went to put 
on her gloves did she perceive that one of them 
was missing. But she supposed that it had fallen 
on the platform at the station as she was getting 
into the car. She believed herself to be quite calm, 
but she remained with one hand gloved and one 
hand bare, which, with her, could only be the result 
of great agitation. 

On the following day Pascal and Clotilde took 
the three o’clock train to go to the Tulettes. The 
mother of Charles, the harness-maker’s wife, had 
brought the boy to them, as they had offered to 
take him to Uncle Macquart’s, where he was to 
remain for the rest of the week. Fresh quarrels had 
disturbed the peace of the household, the husband 
having resolved to tolerate no longer in his house 
another man’s child, that do-nothing, imbecile 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


277 


prince’s son. As it was Grandmother Rougon who 
had dressed him, he was, indeed, dressed on this 
day, a gai n > in black velvet trimmed with gold braid, 
like a young lord, a page of former times going to 
court. And during the quarter of an hour which 
the journey lasted, Clotilde amused herself in the 
compartment, in which they were alone, by taking 
off his cap and smoothing his beautiful blond locks, 
his royal hair that fell in curls over his shoulders. 
She had a ring on her finger, and as she passed her 
hand over his neck she was startled to perceive that 
her caress had left behind it a trace of blood. One 
could not touch the boy’s skin without the red 
dew exuding from it ; the tissues had become so 
lax through extreme degeneration that the slight- 
est scratch brought on a hemorrhage. The doctor 
became at once uneasy, and asked him if he still 
bled at the nose as frequently as formerly. Charles 
hardly knew what to answer; first saying no, then, 
recollecting himself, he said that he had bled a great 
deal the other day. He seemed, indeed, weaker; he 
grew more childish as he grew older ; his intelligence, 
which had never developed, had become clouded. 
This tall boy of fifteen, so beautiful, so girlish- 
looking, with the color of a flower that had grown 
in the shade, did not look ten. 

At the Tulettes Pascal decided that they would 
first take the boy to Uncle Macquart’s. They 
ascended the steep road. In the distance the little 
house looked gay in the sunshine, as it had looked 
on the day before, with its yellow walls and its green 


278 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


mulberry trees extending their twisted branches 
and covering the terrace with a thick, leafy roof. 
A delightful sense of peace pervaded this solitary 
spot, this sage’s retreat, where the only sound to be 
heard was the humming of the bees, circling round 
the tall marshmallows. 

“Ah, that rascal of an uncle!” said Pascal, smil- 
ing, “how I envy him!” 

But he was surprised not to have already seen 
him standing at the. edge of the terrace. And as 
Charles had run off, dragging Clotilde with him to 
see the rabbits, as he said, the doctor continued the 
ascent alone, and was astonished when he reached 
the top to see no one. The blinds were closed, the 
hall door yawned wide open. Only the yellow dog 
was at the threshold, his legs stiff, his hair bristling, 
howling with a low and continuous moan. When 
he saw the visitor, whom he no doubt recognized, 
approaching, he stopped howling for an instant and 
went and stood further off, then he began again to 
whine softly. 

Pascal, filled with apprehension, could not keep 
back the uneasy cry that rose to his lips: 

“Macquart! Macquart !” 

No one answered; a deathlike silence reigned 
over the house, with its door yawning wide open, 
like the mouth of a cavern. The dog continued to 
howl. 

Then Pascal grew impatient, and cried more 
loudly. 

“Macquart! Macquart!” 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


*19 

There was not a stir; the bees hummed, the sky- 
looked down serenely on the peaceful scene. Then 
he hesitated no longer. Perhaps Macquart was 
asleep. But the instant he pushed open the door 
of the kitchen on the left of the hall, a horrible 
odor escaped from it, an odor of burned flesh and 
bones. When he entered the room he could hardly 
breathe, so filled was it by a thick vapor, a stagnant 
and nauseous cloud, which choked and blinded him. 
The sunbeams that filtered through the cracks 
made only a dim light. He hurried to the fireplace, 
thinking that perhaps there had been a fire, but the 
fireplace was empty, and the -articles of furniture 
around appeared to be uninjured. Bewildered, 
and feeling himself growing faint in the poisoned 
atmosphere, he ran to the window and threw the 
shutters wide open. A flood of light entered. 

Then the scene presented to the doctor’s view 
filled him with amazement. Everything was in its 
place ; the glass and the empty bottle of spirits were 
on the table; only the chair in which Uncle 
Macquart must have been sitting bore traces of fire, 
the front legs were blackened and the straw was 
partially consumed. What had become of 
Macquart? Where could he have disappeared? In 
front of the chair, on the brick floor, which was 
saturated with grease, there was a little heap of 
ashes, beside which lay the pipe — a black pipe, 
which had not even broken in falling. All of Uncle 
Macquart was there, in this handful of fine ashes; 
and he was in the red cloud, also, which floated 


280 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


through the open window; in the layer of soot 
which carpeted the entire kitchen ; the horrible 
grease of burnt flesh, enveloping everything, sticky 
and foul to the touch. 

It was the finest case of spontaneous combustion 
physician had ever seen. The doctor had, indeed, 
read in medical papers of surprising cases, among 
others that of a shoemaker’s wife, a drunken 
woman who had fallen asleep over her foot warmer, 
and of whom they had found only a hand and a 
foot. He had, until now, put little faith in these 
cases, unwilling to admit, like the ancients, that a 
body impregnated with alcohol could disengage an 
unknown gas, capable of taking fire spontaneously 
and consuming the flesh and the bones. But he 
denied the truth of them no longer; besides, every- 
thing became clear to him as he reconstructed the 
scene — the coma of drunkenness producing absolute 
insensibility; the pipe falling on the clothes, which 
had taken fire ; the flesh, saturated with liquor, burn- 
ing and cracking; the fat melting, part of it running 
over the ground and part of it aiding the combustion, 
and all, at last — muscles, organs, and bones — con 
sumed in a general blaze. Uncle Macquart was 
all there, with his blue cloth suit, and his fur cap, 
which he wore from one year’s end to the other. 
Doubtless, as soon as he had begun to burn like a 
bonfire he had fallen forward, which would account 
for the chair being only blackened ; and nothing of 
him was left, not a bone, not a tooth, not a nail, 
nothing but this little heap of gray dust which the 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


281 


draught of air from the door threatened at every 
moment to sweep away. 

Clotilde had meanwhile entered, Charles remain- 
ing outside, his attention attracted by the continued 
howling of the dog. 

“Good Heavens, what a smell!” she cried. 
“What is the matter?” 

When Pascal explained to her the extraordinary 
catastrophe that had taken place, she shuddered. 
She took up the bottle to examine it, but she put it 
down again with horror, feeling it moist and sticky 
with Uncle Macquart’s flesh. Nothing could be 
touched, the smallest objects were coated, as it 
were, with this yellowish grease which stuck to 
the hands. 

A. shudder of mingled awe and disgust passed 
through her, and she burst into tears, faltering: 

“What a sad death! What a horrible death!” 

Pascal had recovered from his first shock, and he 
was almost smiling. 

“Why horrible? He was eighty-four years old ; 
he did not suffer. As for me, I think it a superb 
death for that old rascal of an uncle, who, it may 
be now said, did not lead a very exemplary life. 
You remember his envelope; he had some very 
terrible and vile things upon his conscience, which 
did not prevent him, however, from settling down 
later and growing old, surrounded by every com- 
fort, like an old humbug, receiving the recompense 
of virtues which he did not possess. And here he 
lies like the prince of drunkards, burning up of him- 


2%2 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


self, consumed on the burning funeral pile of his 
own body !” 

And the doctor waved his hand m admiration. 

“Just think of it. To be drunk to the point of 
not feeling that one is on fire; to set one’s self 
aflame, like a bonfire on St. John’s day; to disap- 
pear in smoke to the last bone. Think of Uncle 
Macquart starting on his journey through space; 
first diffused through the four corners of the room, 
dissolved in air and floating about, bathing all that 
belonged to him ; then escaping in a cloud of dust 
through the window, when I opened it for him, 
soaring up into the sky, filling the horizon. Why, 
that is an admirable death! To disappear, to leave 
nothing of himself behind but a little heap of 
ashes and a pipe beside it !” 

And he picked up the pipe to keep it, as he said, 
as a relic of Uncle Macquart; while Clotilde, who 
thought she perceived a touch of bitter mockery in 
his eulogistic rhapsody, shuddered anew with horror 
and disgust. But suddenly she perceived something 
under the table — part of the remains, perhaps. 

“Look at that fragment there.” 

He stooped down and picked up with surprise a 
woman’s glove, a yellow glove. 

“Why!” she cried, “it is grandmother’s glove; 
the glove that was missing last evening.” 

They looked at each other; by a common impulse 
the same explanation rose to their lips, Felicite 
was certainly there yesterday ; and a sudden convic- 
tion forced itself on the doctor’s mind — the con- 


DOCTOR PASCAL . 


283 


viction that his mother had seen Uncle Macquart 
burning and that she had not quenched him. Vari- 
ous indications pointed to this — the state of com- 
plete coolness in which he found the room, the 
number of hours which he calculated to have been 
necessary for the combustion of the body. He saw 
clearly the same thought dawning in the terrified 
eyes of his companion. But as it seemed impossible 
that they should ever know the truth, he fabricated 
aloud the simplest explanation : 

“No doubt your grandmother came in yesterday 
on her way back from the asylum, to say good-day 
to Uncle Macquart, before he had begun drinking.” 

“Let us go away! let us go away!” cried Clotilde. 
“I am stifling here; I cannot remain here!” 

Pascal, too, wished to go and give information of 
the death. He went out after her, shut up the 
house, and put the key in his pocket. Outside, 
they heard the little yellow dog still howling. He 
had taken refuge between Charles’ legs, and the boy 
amused himself pushing him with his foot and 
listening to him whining, without comprehending. 

The doctor went at once to the house of M. 
Maurin, the notary at the Tulettes, who was also 
mayor of the commune. A widower for ten years 
past, and living with his daughter, who was a child- 
less widow, he had maintained neighborly relations 
with old Macquart, and had occasionally kept little 
Charles with him for several days at a time, his 
daughter having become interested in the boy who 
was so handsome and so much to be pitied. M. 


284 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


Maurin, horrified at the news, went at once with the 
doctor to draw up a statement of the accident, and 
promised to make out the death certificate in due 
form. As for religious ceremonies, funeral obse- 
quies, they seemed scarcely possible. When they 
entered the kitchen the draught from the door 
scattered the ashes about, and when they piously 
attempted to collect them again they succeeded 
only in gathering together the scrapings of the flags, 
a collection of accumulated dirt, in which there 
could be but little of Uncle Macquart. What, 
then, could they bury? It was better to give up 
the idea. So they gave it up. Besides, Uncle 
Macquart had been hardly a devout Catholic, and 
the family contented themselves with causing 
masses to be said later on for the repose of his soul. 

The notary, meantime, had immediately declared 
that there existed a will, which had been deposited 
with him, and he asked Pascal to meet him at his 
house on the next day but one for the reading; for 
he thought he might tell the doctor at once that 
Uncle Macquart had chosen him as his executor. 
And he ended by offering, like a kind-hearted man, 
to keep Charles with him until then, comprehending 
how greatly the boy, who was so unwelcome at his 
mother’s, would be in the way in the midst of all 
these occurrences. Charles seemed enchanted, and 
he remained at the Tulettes. 

It was not until very late, until seven o’clock, 
that Clotilde and Pascal were able to take the train 
to return to Plassans, after the doctor had at last 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


285 

visited the two patients whom he had to see. But 
when they returned together to the notary’s on the 
day appointed for the meeting, they had the dis- 
agreeable surprise of finding old Mme. Rougon 
installed there.. She had naturally learned of 
Macquart’s death, and had hurried there on the 
following day, full of excitement, and making a 
great show of grief; and she had just made her 
appearance again to-day, having heard the famous 
testament spoken of. The reading of the will, how- 
ever, was a simple matter, unmarked by any inci- 
dent. Macquart had left all the fortune that he 
could dispose of for the purpose of erecting a 
superb marble monument to himself, with two 
angels with folded wings, weeping. It was his own 
idea, a reminiscence of a similar tomb which he had 
seen abroad — in Germany, perhaps — when he was a 
soldier. And he had charged his nephew Pascal to 
superintend the erection of the monument, as he 
was the only one of the family, he said, who had 
any taste. 

During the reading of the will Clotilde had 
remained in the notary’s garden, sitting on a bench 
under the shade of an ancient chestnut tree. When 
Pascal and Felicite again appeared, there was a 
moment of great embarrassment, for they had not 
spoken to one another for some months past. The 
old lady, however, affected to be perfectly at her 
ease, making no allusion whatever to the new situa- 
tion, and giving it to be understood that they might 
very well meet and appear united before the world, 


286 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


without for that reason entering into an explanation 
or becoming reconciled. But she committed the 
mistake of laying too much stress on the great grief 
which Macquart’s death had caused her. Pascal, 
who suspected the overflowing joy, the unbounded 
delight which it gave her to think that this family 
ulcer was to be at last healed, that this abominable 
uncle was at last out of the way, became gradually 
possessed by an impatience, an indignation, which 
he could not control. His eyes fastened themselves 
involuntarily on his mother’s gloves, which were 
black. 

Just then she was expressing her grief in lowered 
tones: 

“But how imprudent it was, at his age, to persist 
in living alone — like a wolf in his lair! If he had 
only had a servant in the house with him !” 

Then the doctor, hardly conscious of what he was 
saying, terrified at hearing himself say the words, 
but impelled by an irresistible force, said : 

“But, mother, since you were there, why did you 
not quench him?” 

Old Mme. Rougon turned frightfully pale. How 
could her son have known? She looked at him for 
an instant in open-mouthed amazement ; while 
Clotilde grew as pale as she, in the certainty of the 
crime, which was now evident. It was an avowal, 
this terrified silence which had fallen between the 
mother, the son, and the granddaughter — the shud- 
dering silence in which families bury their domestic 
tragedies. The doctor, in despair at having spoken, 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


287 


he who avoided so carefully all disagreeable and 
useless explanations, was trying desperately to 
retract his words, when a new catastrophe extricated 
him from his terrible embarrassment. 

Felicity desired to take Charles away with her, in 
order not to trespass on the notary’s kind hospital- 
ity; and as the latter had sent the boy after break- 
fast to spend an hour or two with Aunt Dide, he 
had sent the maid servant to the asylum with orders 
to bring him back immediately. It was at this 
juncture that the servant, whom they were waiting 
for in the garden, made her appearance, covered 
with perspiration, out of breath, and greatly ex- 
cited, crying from a distance: 

“My God! My God! come quickly. Master 
Charles is bathed in blood.” 

Filled with consternation, all three set off for the 
asylum. This day chanced to be one of Aunt 
Dide’s good days; very calm and gentle she sat 
erect in the armchair in which she had spent the 
hours, the long hours for twenty-two years past, 
looking straight before her into vacancy. She 
seemed to have grown still thinner, all the flesh had 
disappeared, her limbs were now only bones covered 
with parchment-like skin ; and her keeper, the 
stout fair-haired girl, carried her, fed her, took her 
up and laid her down as if she had been a bundle. 
The ancestress, the forgotten one, tall, bony, 
ghastly, remained motionless, her eyes only seem- 
ing to have life, her eyes, shining clear as spring 
water in her thin withered face. But on this morn- 


288 


DOCTOR PASCAL . 


ing, again a sudden rush of tears had streamed down 
her cheeks, and she had begun to stammer words 
without any connection; which seemed to prove 
that in the midst of her senile exhaustion and the 
incurable torpor of madness, the slow induration of 
the brain and the limbs was not yet complete; there 
still were memories stored away, gleams of intelli- 
gence still were possible. Then her face had 
resumed its vacant expression. She seemed indiffer- 
ent to everyone and everything, laughing, some- 
times, at an accident, at a fall, but most often seeing 
nothing and hearing nothing, gazing fixedly into 
.vacancy. 

When Charles had been brought to her the 
keeper had immediately installed him before the 
little table, in front of his great-great-grandmother. 
The girl kept a package of pictures for him — sol- 
diers, captains, kings clad in purple and gold, and 
she gave them to him with a pair of scissors, saying : 

“There, amuse yourself quietly, and behave well. 
You see that to-day grandmother is very good. 
You must be good, too.” 

The boy raised his eyes to the madwoman’s face, 
and both looked at each other. At this moment 
the resemblance between them was extraordinary. 
Their eyes, especially, their vacant and limpid eyes, 
seemed to lose themselves in one another, to be 
identical. Then it was the physiognomy, the 
whole face, the worn features of the centenarian, 
that passed over three generations to this delicate 
child’s face, it, too, worn already, as it were, and aged 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


289 


by the wear of the race. Neither smiled, they 
regarded each other intently, with an air of grave 
imbecility. 

“Well!” continued the keeper, who had acquired 
the habit of talking to herself to cheer herself when 
with her mad charge, “you cannot deny each other. 
The same hand made you both. You are the very 
spit-down of each other. Come, laugh a bit, amuse 
yourselves, since you like to be together.” 

But to fix his attention for any length of time 
fatigued Charles, and he was the first to lower his 
eyes; he seemed to be interested in his pictures, 
while Aunt Dide, who had an astonishing power of 
fixing her attention, as if she had been turned into 
stone, continued to look at him fixedly, without 
even winking an eyelid. 

The keeper busied herself for a few moments in 
the little sunny room, made gay by its light, blue- 
flowered paper. She made the bed which she had 
been airing, she arranged the linen on the shelves of 
the press. But she generally profited by the pres- 
ence of the boy to take a little relaxation. She 
had orders never to leave her charge alone, and now 
that he was here she ventured to trust her with him. 

“Listen to me well,” she went on, “I have to go 
out for a little, and if she stirs, if she should need 
me, ring for me, call me at once ; do you hear? You 
understand, you are a big enough boy to be able to 
call one.” 

He had looked up again, and made a sign that he 
had understood, and that he would call her. And 


290 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


when he found himself alone with Aunt Dide he 
returned to his pictures quietly. This lasted for a 
quarter of an hour amid the profound silence of the 
asylum, broken only at intervals by some prison 
sound — a stealthy step, the jingling of a bunch of 
keys, and occasionally a loud cry, immediately 
silenced. But the boy must have been tired by the 
excessive heat of the day, for sleep gradually stole 
over him. Soon his head, fair as a lily, drooped, and 
as if weighed down by the too heavy casque of his 
royal locks, he let it sink gently on the pictures and 
fell asleep, with his cheek resting on the gold and 
purple kings. The lashes of his closed eyelids cast 
a shadow on his delicate skin, with its small blue 
veins, through which life pulsed feebly. He was 
beautiful as an angel, but with the indefinable cor- 
ruption of a whole race spread over his countenance. 
And Aunt Dide looked at him with her vacant stare 
in which there was neither pleasure nor pain, the 
stare of eternity contemplating things earthly. 

At the end of a few moments, however, an expres- 
sion of interest seemed to dawn in the clear eyes. 
Something had just happened, a drop of blood was 
forming on the edge of the left nostril of the boy. 
This drop fell and another formed and followed it. 
It was the blood, the dew of blood, exuding this time, 
without a scratch, without a bruise, which issued 
and flowed of itself in the laxity of the degenerate 
tissues. The drops became a slender thread which 
flowed over the gold of the pictures. A little pool 
covered them, and made its way to a corner of the 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


291 


table; then the drops began again, splashing dully 
one by one upon the floor. And he still slept, with 
the divinely calm look of a cherub, not even con- 
scious of the life that was escaping from him ; and 
the madwoman continued to look at him, with 
an air of increasing interest, but without terror, 
amused, rather, her attention engaged by this, as by 
the flight of the big flies, which her gaze often 
followed for hours. 

Several minutes more passed, the slender thread 
had grown larger, the drops followed one another 
more rapidly, falling on the floor with a monotonous 
and persistent drip. And Charles, at one moment, 
stirred, opened his eyes, and perceived that he was 
covered with blood. But he was not frightened ; he 
was accustomed to this bloody spring, which issued 
from him at the slightest cause. He merely gave 
a sigh of weariness. Instinct, however, must have 
warned him, for he moaned more loudly than before, 
and called confusedly in stammering accents: 

“Mamma! mamma!” 

His weakness was no doubt already excessive, for 
an irresistible stupor once more took possession of 
him, his head dropped, his eyes closed, and he 
seemed to fall asleep again, continuing his plaint, as 
if in a dream, moaning in fainter and fainter accents : 

“Mamma ! Mamma !” 

Now the pictures were inundated; the black 
velvet jacket and trousers, braided with gold, were 
stained with long streaks of blood, and the little red 
stream began again to flow persistently from his left 


292 DOCTOR RASCAL. 

nostril, without stopping, crossed the red pool on 
the table and fell upon the ground, where it at last 
formed a veritable lake. A loud cry from the mad- 
woman, a terrified call would have sufficed. But 
she did not cry, she did not call ; motionless, rigid, 
emaciated, sitting there forgotten of the world, she 
gazed with the fixed look of the ancestress who sees 
the destinies of her race being accomplished. She 
sat there as if dried up, bound ; her limbs and her 
tongue tied by her hundred years, her brain ossified 
by madness, incapable of willing or of acting. And 
yet the sight of the little red stream began to stir 
some feeling in her. A tremor passed over her 
deathlike countenance, a flush mounted to her 
cheeks. Finally, a last plaint roused her completely : 

“Mamma! Mamma!” 

Then it was evident that a terrible struggle was 
taking place in Aunt Dide. She carried her skele- 
ton-like hand to her forehead as if she felt her brain 
bursting. Her mouth was wide open, but no sound 
issued from it; the dreadful tumult that had arisen 
within her had no doubt paralyzed her tongue. 
She tried to rise, to run, but she had no longer any 
muscles; she remained fastened to her seat. All 
her poor body trembled in the superhuman effort 
which she was making to cry for help, without being 
able to break the bonds of old age and madness 
which held her prisoner. Her face was distorted 
with terror; memory gradually awakening, she must 
have comprehended everything. 

And it was a slow and gentle agpny, of which the 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


293 


spectacle lasted for several minutes more. Charles, 
silent now, as if he had again fallen asleep, was 
losing the last drops of blood that had remained in 
his veins, which were emptying themselves softly. 
His lily-like whiteness increased until it became 
a deathlike pallor. His lips lost their rosy color, 
became a pale pink, then white. And, ‘as he was 
about to expire, he opened his large eyes and fixed 
them on his great-great-grandmother, who watched 
the light dying in them. All the waxen face was 
already dead, the eyes only were still living. They 
still kept their limpidity, their brightness. All at 
once they became vacant, the light in them was 
extinguished. This was the end — the death of the 
eyes, and Charles had died, without a struggle, 
exhausted, like a fountain from which all the water 
has run out. Life no longer pulsed through the 
veins of his delicate skin, there was now only the 
shadow of its wings on his white face. But he 
remained divinely beautiful, his face lying in blood, 
surrounded by his royal blond locks, like one of 
those little bloodless dauphins who, unable to bear 
the execrable heritage of their race, die of decrepi- 
tude and imbecility at sixteen. 

The boy exhaled his latest breath as Dr. Pascal 
entered the room, followed by Felicite and Clotilde. 
And when he saw the quantity of blood that inun- 
dated the floor, he cried : 

“Ah, my God! it is as I feared, a hemorrhage 
from the nose ! The poor darling, no one was with 
him, and it is all over!” 


294 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


But all three were struck with terror at the extra- 
ordinary spectacle that now met their gaze. Aunt 
Dide, who seemed to have grown taller, in the 
superhuman effort she was making, had almost 
succeeded in raising herself up, and her eyes, fixed 
on the dead boy, so fair and so gentle, and on the 
red sea of blood, beginning to congeal, that was 
lying around him, kindled with a thought, after a 
long sleep of twenty-two years. This final lesion of 
madness, this irremediable darkness of the mind, 
was evidently not so complete but that some mem- 
ory of the past, lying hidden there, might awaken 
suddenly under the terrible blow which had struck 
her. And the ancestress, the forgotten one, lived 
again, emerged from her oblivion, rigid and wasted, 
like a specter of terror and grief. 

For an instant she remained panting. Then with 
a shudder, which made her teeth chatter, she stam- 
mered a single phrase : 

‘‘The gendarme! the gendarme!” 

Pascal and Felicite and Clotilde understood. 
They looked at one another involuntarily, turning 
very pale. The whole dreadful history of the old 
mother — of the mother of them all — rose before 
them, the ardent love of her youth, the long suffering 
of her mature age. Already two moral shocks had 
shaken her terribly — the first, when she was in her 
ardent prime, when a gendarme shot down her lover 
Macquart, the smuggler, like a dog; the second, 
years ago, when another gendarme shattered with a 
pistol shot the skull of her grandson Silvere, the 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


2 95 


insurgent, the victim of the hatred and the san- 
guinary strife of the family. Blood had always 
bespattered her. And a third moral shock finished 
her; blood bespattered her again, the impoverished 
blood of her race, which she had just beheld flowing 
slowly, and which lay upon the ground, while the 
fair royal child, his veins and his heart empty, slept. 

Three .times — face to face with her past life, her 
life red with passion and suffering, haunted by the 
image of expiation — she stammered : 

“The gendarme! the gendarme! the gendarme!" 

Then she sank back into her armchair. They 
thought she was dead, killed by the shock. 

But the keeper at this moment at last appeared, 
endeavoring to excuse herself, fearing that she 
would be dismissed. When, aided by her, Dr. Pas- 
cal had placed Aunt Dide on the bed, he found that 
the old mother was still alive. She was not to die 
until the following day, at the age of one hundred 
and five years, three months, and seven days, of 
congestion of the brain, caused by the last shock 
she had received. 

Pascal, turning to his mother, said : 

“She will not live twenty-four hours; to-morrow 
she will be dead. Ah! Uncle Macquart, then she, 
and this poor boy, one after another. How much 
misery and grief !” 

He paused and added in a lower tone: 

“The family is thinning out ; the old trees fall 
and the young die standing.” 

F£licit6 must have thought this another allusion. 


29 6 DOCTOR PASCAL. 

She was sincerely shocked by the tragic death of 
little Charles. But, notwithstanding, above the 
horror which she felt there arose a sense of immense 
relief. Next week, when they should have ceased 
to weep, what a rest to be able to say to herself 
that all this abomination of the Tulettes was at an 
end, that the family might at last rise, and shine in 
history ! 

Then she remembered that she had not answered 
the involuntary accusation made against her by 
her son at the notary’s; and she spoke again of 
Macquart, through bravado : 

“You see now that servants are of no use. There 
was one here, and yet she prevented nothing; it 
would have been useless for Uncle Macquart to have 
had one to take care of him ; he would be in ashes 
now, all the same.” 

She sighed, and then continued in a broken voice: 

“Well, well, neither our own fate nor that of oth- 
ers is in our hands; things happen as they will. 
These are great blows that have fallen upon us. 
We must only trust to God for the preservation and 
the prosperity of our family.” 

Dr. Pascal bowed with his habitual air of defer- 
ence, and said : 

“You are right, mother.” 

Clotilde knelt down. Her former fervent Catho- 
lic faith had revived in this chamber of blood, of 
madness, and of death. Tears streamed down her 
cheeks, and with clasped hands she was praying 
fervently for the dear ones who were no more. 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


29 1 


She prayed that God would grant that their suffer- 
ings might indeed be ended, their faults pardoned, 
and that they might live again in another life, a life 
of unending happiness. And she prayed with the 
utmost fervor, in her terror of a hell, which after 
this miserable life would make suffering eternal. 

From this day Pascal and Clotilde went to visit 
their sick side by side, filled with greater pity than 
ever. Perhaps, with Pascal, the feeling of his pow- 
erlessness against inevitable disease was even 
stronger than before. The only wisdom was to let 
nature take its course, to eliminate dangerous 
elements, and to labor only in the supreme work of 
giving health and strength. But the suffering and 
the death of those who are dear to us awaken in us 
a hatred of disease, an irresistible desire to combat 
and to vanquish it. And the doctor never tasted so 
great a joy as when he succeeded, with his hypo- 
dermic injections, in soothing a paroxysm of pain, 
in seeing the groaning patient grow tranquil and 
fall asleep. Clotilde, in return, adored him, proud 
of their love, as if it were a consolation which they 
carried, like the viaticum, to the poor. 


X. 


Martine one morning obtained from Dr. Pascal, 
as she did every three months, his receipt for fifteen 
hundred francs, to take it to the notary Grandguillot, 
to get from him what she called their “income.” 
The doctor seemed surprised that the payment 
should have fallen due again so soon ; he had never 
been so indifferent as he was now about money 
matters, leaving to Martine the care of settling 
everything. And he and Clotilde were under the 
plane trees, absorbed in the joy that filled their life, 
lulled by the ceaseless song of the fountain, when 
the servant returned with a frightened face, and in 
a state of extraordinary agitation. She was so 
breathless with excitement that for a moment she 
could not speak. 

“Oh, my God ! Oh, my God !” she cried at last. 
‘‘M. Grandguillot has gone away!” 

Pascal did not at first comprehend. 

“Well, my girl, there is no hurry,” he said ; “you 
can go back another day.” 

“No, no! He has gone away; don’t you hear? 
He has gone away forever ” 

And as the waters rush forth in the bursting 
of a dam, her emotion vented itself in a torrent 
of words. 


298 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


299 

“I reached the street, and I saw from a distance 
a crowd gathered before the door. A chill ran 
through me ; I felt that some misfortune had hap- 
pened. The door closed, and not a blind open, as 
if there was somebody dead in the house. They 
told me when I got there that he had run away ; 
that he had not left a sou behind him ; that many 
families would be ruined.” 

She laid the receipt on the stone table. 

‘‘There! There is your paper! It is all over 
with us, we have not a sou left, we are going to die 
of starvation !” And she sobbed aloud in the 
anguish of her miserly heart, distracted by this loss 
of a fortune, and trembling at the prospect of 
impending want. 

Clotilde sat stunned and speechless, her eyes 
fixed on Pascal, whose predominating feeling at first 
seemed to be one of incredulity. He endeavored to 
calm Martine. Why! why! it would not do to 
give up in this way. If all she knew of the affair 
was what she had heard from the people in the 
street, it might be only gossip, after all, which 
always exaggerates everything. M. Grandguillot a 
fugitive; M. Grandguillot a thief; that was mon- 
strous, impossible ! A man of such probity, a house 
liked and respected by all Plassans for more than a 
century past. Why people thought money safer 
there than in the Bank of France. 

‘‘Consider, Martine, this would not have come all 
of a sudden, like a thunderclap; there would have 
been some rumors of it beforehand. The deuce! 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


300 

an old reputation does not fall to pieces in that 
way, in a night.” 

At this she made a gesture of despair. 

"Ah, monsieur, that is what most afflicts me, 
because, you see, it throws some of the responsi- 
bility on me. For weeks past I have been hearing 
stories on all sides. As for you two, naturally you 
hear nothing; you don’t even know whether you are 
alive or dead.” 

Neither Pascal nor Clotilde could refrain from 
smiling; for it was indeed true that their love lifted 
them so far above the earth that none of the com- 
mon sounds of existence reached them. 

“But the stories I heard were so ugly that I didn’t 
like to worry you with them. I thought they were 
lies.” 

She was silent for a moment, and then added that 
while some people merely accused M. Grandguillot 
of having speculated on the Bourse, there were others 
who accused him of still worse practices. And she 
burst into fresh sobs. 

"My God! My God! what is going to become 
of us? We are all- going to die of starvation !” 

Shaken, then, moved by seeing Clotilde’s eyes, 
too, filled with tears, Pascal made an effort to 
remember, to see clearly into the past. Years ago, 
when he had been practicing in Plassans, he had 
deposited at different times, with M. Grandguillot, 
the twenty thousand francs on the interest of which 
he had lived comfortably for the past sixteen years, 
and on each occasion the notary had given him a 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


301 


.receipt for the sum deposited. This would no 
doubt enable him to establish his position as a 
personal creditor. Then a vague recollection 
awoke in his memory; he remembered, without 
being able to fix the date, that at the request of 
the notary, and in consequence of certain represen- 
tations made by him, which Pascal had forgotten, 
he had given the lawyer a power of attorney for the 
purpose of investing the whole or a part of his 
money, in mortgages, and he was even certain that 
in this power the name of the attorney had been 
left in blank. But he was ignorant as to whether 
this document had ever been used or not ; he had 
never taken the trouble to inquire how his money 
had been invested. A fresh pang of miserly an- 
guish made Martine cry out : 

“Ah, monsieur, you are well punished for your 
sin. Was that a way to abandon one’s money? 
For my part, I know almost to a sou how my 
account stands every quarter; I have every figure 
and every document at my fingers’ ends.’’ 

In the midst of her distress an unconscious smile 
broke over her face, lighting it all up. Her long- 
cherished passion had been gratified ; her four hun- 
dred francs wages, saved almost intact, put out at 
interest for thirty years, at last amounted to the 
enormous sum of twenty thousand francs. And 
this treasure was put away in a safe place which no 
one knew. She beamed with delight at the recol- 
lection, and she said no more. 

“But who says that our money is lost?” cried 


302 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


Pascal. “M. Grandguillot had a private fortune; 
he has not taken away with him his house and his 
lands, I suppose. They will look into the affair; 
they will make an investigation. I cannot make 
up my mind to believe him a common thief. The 
only trouble is the delay; a liquidation drags on 
so long.” 

He spoke in this way in order to reassure Clotilde, 
whose growing anxiety he observed. She looked at 
him, and she looked around her at La Souleiade ; 
her only care his happiness ; her most ardent desire 
to live here always, as she had lived in the past, to 
love him always in this beloved solitude. And he, 
wishing to tranquilize her, recovered his fine indif- 
ference ; never having lived for money, he did not 
imagine that one could suffer from the want of it. 

“But I have some money!” he cried, at last. 
“What does Martine mean by saying that we have 
not a sou left, and that we are going to die of 
starvation !” 

And he rose gayly, and made them both follow 
him, saying: 

“Come, come, I am going to show you some 
money. And I will give some of it to Martine that 
she may make us a good dinner this evening.” 

Upstairs in his room he triumphantly opened his 
desk before them. It was in a drawer of this desk 
that for years past he had thrown the money which 
his later patients had brought him of their own 
accord, for he had never sent them an account. 
Nor had he ever known the exact amount of his 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


3°3 


little treasure, of the gold and bank bills mingled 
together in confusion, from which he took the sums 
he required for his pocket money, his experiments, 
his presents, and his alms. During the last few 
months he had made frequent visits to his desk, 
making deep inroads into its contents. But he had 
been so accustomed to find there the sums he 
required, after years of economy during which he 
had spent scarcely anything, that he had come to 
believe his savings inexhaustible. 

He gave a satisfied laugh, then, as he opened the 
drawer, crying: 

“Now you shall see! Now you shall see !” 

And he was confounded, when, after searching 
among the heap of notes and bills, he succeeded in 
collecting only a sum of 615 francs — two notes of 100 
francs each, 400 francs in gold, and 15 francs in 
change. He shook out the papers, he felt in every 
corner of the drawer, crying: 

“But it cannot be! There was always money 
here before, there was a heap of money here 
a few days ago. It must have been all those old 
bills that misled me. I assure you that last 
week I saw a great deal of money. I had it in 
my hand.” 

He spoke with such amusing good faith, his 
childlike surprise was so sincere, that Clotilde could 
not keep from smiling. Ah, the poor master, what 
a wretched business man he was! Then, as she 
observed Martine’s look of anguish, her utter 
dispair at sight of this insignificant sum, which was 


304 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


now all there was for the maintenance of all three, 
she was seized with a feeling of despair; her eyes 
filled with tears, and she murmured : 

“My God, it is for me that you have spent every- 
thing; if we have nothing now, if we are ruined, it 
is I who am the cause of it !” 

Pascal had already forgotten the money he had 
taken for the presents. Evidently that was where 
it had gone. The explanation tranquilized him. 
And as she began to speak in her grief of returning 
everything to the dealers, he grew angry. 

“Give back what I have given you! You would 
give a piece of my heart with it, then ! No, I would 
rather die of hunger, I tell you !” 

Then his confidence already restored, seeing a 
future of unlimited possibilities opening out before 
him, he said : 

“Besides, we are not going to die of hunger 
to-night, are we, Martine? There is enough here 
to keep us for a long time.” 

Martine shook her head. She would undertake 
to manage with it for two months, for two and a 
half, perhaps, if people had sense, but not longer. 
Formerly the drawer was replenished ; there was 
always some money coming in ; but now that mon- 
sieur had given up his patients, they had absolutely 
no income. They must not count on any help 
from outside, then. And she ended by saying: 

“Give me the two one hundred franc bills. I’ll 
try and make them last for a month. Then we 
shall see. But be very prudent ; don’t touch the 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


3°5 

four hundred francs in gold ; lock the drawer and 
don’t open it again.” 

“Oh, as to that,” cried the doctor, “you may 
make your mind easy. I would rather cut off my 
right hand.” 

And thus it was settled. Martine was to have 
entire control of this last purse; and they might 
trust to her economy, they were sure that she would 
save the centimes. As for Clotilde, who had never 
had a private purse, she would not even feel the 
want of money. Pascal, only, would suffer from no 
longer having his inexhaustible treasure to draw 
upon, but he had given his promise to allow the 
servant to buy everything. 

“There ! That is a good piece of work !” he said, 
relieved, as happy as if he had just settled some 
important affair which would assure them a living 
for a long time to come. 

A week passed during which nothing seemed to 
have changed at La Souleiade. In the midst of 
their tender raptures, neither Pascal nor Clotilde 
thought any more of the want which was impend- 
ing. And one morning during the absence of the 
latter, who had gone with Martine to market, the 
doctor received a visit which filled him at first with 
a sort of terror. It was from the woman who had 
sold him the beautiful corsage of old point d’Alen- 
gon, his first present to Clotilde. He felt himself 
so weak against a possible temptation that he 
trembled. Even before the woman had uttered a 
word he had already begun to defend himself — no, 


3°6 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


no, be neither could nor would buy anything. And 
with outstretched hands he prevented her from 
taking anything out of hex little bag, declaring to 
himself that he would look at nothing. The dealer, 
however, a fat, amiable woman, smiled, certain of 
victory. In an insinuating voice she began to tell 
him a long story of how a lady, whom she was not 
at liberty to name, one of the most distinguished 
ladies in Plassans, who had suddenly met with a 
reverse of fortune, had been obliged to part with 
one of her jewels; and she then enlarged on the 
splendid chance — a piece of jewelry that had cost 
twelve hundred francs, and she was willing to let it 
go for five hundred. She opened her bag slowly, in 
spite of the terrified and ever-louder protestations of 
the doctor, and took from it a slender gold necklace 
set simply with seven pearls in front; but the 
pearls were of wonderful brilliancy — flawless, and 
perfect in shape. The ornament was simple, 
chaste, and of exquisite delicacy. And instantly 
he saw in fancy the necklace on Clotilde’s beautiful 
neck, as its natural adornment. Any other jewel 
would have been a useless ornament, these pearls 
would be the fitting symbol of her youth. And he 
took the necklace in his trembling fingers, experi- 
encing a mortal anguish at the idea of returning it. 
He defended himself still, however; he declared 
that he had not five hundred francs, while the dealer 
continued, in her smooth voice, to push the advan- 
tage she had gained. After another quarter of an 
hour, when she thought she had him secure, she 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


3°7 

suddenly offered him the necklace for three hum 
dred francs, and he yielded ; his mania for giving, 
his desire to please his idol, to adorn her, conquered. 
When he went to the desk to take the fifteen gold 
pieces to count them out to the dealer, he felt con- 
vinced that the notary’s affairs would be arranged, 
and that they would soon have plenty of money. 

When Pascal found himself once more alone, with 
the ornament in his pocket, he was seized with a 
childish delight, and he planned his little surprise, 
while waiting, excited and impatient, for Clotilde’s 
return. The moment she made her appearance his 
heart began to beat violently. She was very warm, 
for an August sun was blazing in the sky, and she 
laid aside her things quickly, pleased with her walk, 
telling him, laughing, of the good bargain Martine 
had made — two pigeons for eighteen sous. While 
she was speaking he pretended to notice something 
on her neck. 

“Why, what have you on your neck? Let me 
see.” 

He had the necklace in his hand, and he suc- 
ceeded in putting it around her neck, while feigning 
to pass his fingers over it, to assure himself that 
there was nothing there. But she resisted, saying 
gayly : 

“Don’t! There is nothing on my neck. Here, 
what are you doing? What have you in your hand 
that is tickling me?” 

He caught hold of her, and drew her before the 
long mirror, in which she had a full view of herself. 


308 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


On her neck the slender chain showed like a thread 
of gold, and the seven pearls, like seven milky stars, 
shone with soft luster against her satin skin. She 
looked charmingly childlike. Suddenly she gave a 
delighted laugh, like the cooing of a dove swelling 
out its throat proudly. 

“Oh, master, master, how good you are ! Do you 
think of nothing but me, then? How happy you 
make me !” 

And the joy which shone in her eyes, the joy of 
the woman and the lover, happy to be beautiful and 
to be adored, recompensed him divinely for his 
folly. 

She threw back her head, radiant, and held up 
her mouth to him. He bent over and kissed her. 

“Are you happy?” 

“Oh, yes, master, happy, happy ! Pearls are so 
sweet, so pure ! And these are so becoming to me !” 

For an instant longer she admired herself in the 
glass, innocently vain of her fair flower-like skin, 
under the nacre drops of the pearls. Then, yield- 
ing to a desire to show herself, hearing the servant 
moving about outside, she ran out, crying: 

“Martine, Martine! See what master has just 
given me! Say, am I not beautiful?” 

But all at once, seeing the old maid’s severe face, 
that had suddenly turned an ashen hue, she became 
confused, and all her pleasure was spoiled. Perhaps 
she had a consciousness of the jealous pang which 
her brilliant youth caused this poor creature, worn 
out in the dumb resignation of her servitude, in 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


309 

adoration of her master. This, however, was only 
a momentary feeling, unconscious in the one, hardly 
suspected by the other, and what remained was the 
evident disapprobation of the economical servant, 
condemning the present with her sidelong glance. 

Clotilde was seized with a little chill. 

“Only,” she murmured, “master has rummaged 
his desk again. Pearls are very dear, are they not?” 

Pascal, embarrassed, too, protested volubly, tell- 
ing them of the splendid opportunity presented by 
the dealer’s visit. An incredibly good stroke of 
business — it was impossible to avoid buying the 
necklace. 

“How much?” asked the young girl with real 
anxiety. 

“Three hundred francs.” 

Martine, who had not yet opened her lips, but 
who looked terrible in her silence, could not restrain 
a cry. 

“Good God! enough to live upon for six weeks, 
and we have not bread !” 

Large tears welled from Clotilde’s eyes. She 
would have torn the necklace from her neck if 
Pascal had not prevented her. She wished to give 
it to him on the instant, and she faltered in heart- 
broken tones: 

“It is true, Martine is right. Master is mad, and 
I am mad, too, to keep this for an instant, in the 
situation in which we are. It would burn my flesh. 
Let me take it back, I beg of you.” 

Never would he consent to this, he said. Now 


3io 


DOCTOR RASCAL . 


his eyes, too, were moist, he joined in their grief, 
crying that he was incorrigible, that they ought to 
have taken all the money away from him. And 
running to the desk he took the hundred francs that 
were left, and forced Martine to take them, saying: 

“I tell you that I will not keep another sou. I 
should spend this, too. Take it, Martine; you are 
the only one of us who has any sense. You will 
make the money last, I am very certain, until our 
affairs are settled. And you, dear, keep that ; do 
not grieve me.” 

Nothing more was said about this incident. But 
Clotilde kept the necklace, wearing it under her 
gown ; and there was a sort of delightful mystery 
in feeling on her neck, unknown to everyone, this 
simple, pretty ornament. Sometimes, when they 
were alone, she would smile at Pascal and draw the 
pearls from her dress quickly, and show them to 
him without a word ; and as quickly she would 
replace them again on her warm neck, filled with 
delightful emotion. It was their fond folly which 
she thus recalled to him, with a confused gratitude, 
a vivid and radiant joy — a joy which nevermore 
left her. 

A straitened existence, sweet in spite of every- 
thing, now began for them. Martine made an exact 
inventory of the resources of the house, and it was 
not reassuring. The provision of potatoes only 
promised to be of any importance. As ill luck 
would have it, the jar of oil was almost out, and the 
last cask of wine was also nearly empty. La Sou- 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


3il 

leiade, having neither vines nor olive trees, produced 
only a few vegetables and some fruits — pears, not 
yet ripe, and trellis grapes, which were to be their 
only delicacies. And meat and bread had to be 
bought every day. So that from the first day the 
servant put Pascal and Clotilde on rations, sup- 
pressing the former sweets, creams, and pastry, and 
reducing the food to the quantity barely necessary 
to sustain life. She resumed all her former author- 
ity, treating them like children who were not to be 
consulted, even with regard to their wishes or their 
tastes. It was she who arranged the menus, who 
knew better than themselves what they wanted; but 
all this like a mother, surrounding them with unceas- 
ing care, performing the miracle of enabling them 
to live still with comfort on their scanty resources; 
occasionally severe with them, for their own good, 
as one is severe with a child when it refuses to eat 
its food. And it seemed as if this maternal care, 
this last immolation, the illusory peace with which 
she surrounded their love, gave her, too, a little hap- 
piness, and drew her out of the dumb despair into 
which she had fallen. Since she had thus watched 
over them she had begun to look like her old self, 
with her little white face, the face of a nun vowed 
to chastity; her calm ash-colored eyes, which ex- 
pressed the resignation of her thirty years of servi- 
tude. When, after the eternal potatoes and the 
little cutlet at four sous, undistinguishable among 
the vegetables, she was able, on certain days, with, 
out compromising her budget, to give them pan- 


312 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


cakes, she was triumphant, she laughed to see them 
laugh. 

Pascal and Clotilde thought everything she did 
was right, which did not prevent them, however, 
from jesting about her when she was not present. 
The old jests about her avarice were repeated over 
and over again. They said that she counted the 
grains of pepper, so many grains for each dish, in 
her passion for economy. When the potatoes had 
too little oil, when the cutlets were reduced to a 
mouthful, they would exchange a quick glance, 
stifling their laughter in their napkins, until she 
had left the room. Everything was a source of 
amusement to them, and they laughed innocently 
at their misery. 

At the end of the first month Pascal thought of 

o 

Martine’s wages. Usually she took her forty francs 
herself from the common purse which she kept. 

“My poor girl,” he said to her one evening, “what 
are you going to do for your wages, now that we 
have no more money?” 

She remained for a moment with her eyes fixed 
on the ground, with an air of consternation, then 
she said : 

“Well, monsieur, I must only wait.” 

But he saw that she had not said all that was in 
her mind, that she had thought of some arrange- 
ment which she did not know how to propose to 
him, so he encouraged her. 

“Well, then, if monsieur would consent to it, I 
should like monsieur to sign me a paper.” 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


313 

“How, a paper?” 

“Yes, a paper, in which monsieur should say, 
every month, that he owes me forty francs.” 

Pascal at once made out the paper for her, and 
this made her quite happy. She put it away as 
carefully as if it had been real money. This , evi- 
dently tranquilized her. But the paper became a 
new subject of wondering amusement to the doctor 
and his companion. In what did the extraordinary 
power consist which money has on certain natures? 
This old maid, who would serve him on bended 
knees, who adored him above everything, to the 
extent of having devoted to him her whole life, to 
ask for this silly guarantee, this scrap of paper 
which was of no value, if he should be unable to 
pay her. 

So far neither Pascal nor Clotilde had any great 
merit in preserving their serenity in misfortune, for 
they did not feel it. They lived high above it, in 
the rich and happy realm of their love. At table 
they did not know what they were eating; they 
might fancy they were partaking of a princely 
banquet, served on silver dishes. They were 
unconscious of the increasing destitution around 
them, of the hunger of the servant who lived upon 
the crumbs from their table; and they walked 
through the empty house as through a palace hung 
with silk and filled with riches. This was undoubt- 
edly the happiest period of their love. The work- 
room had pleasant memories of the past, and they 
spent whole days there, wrapped luxuriously in the 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


314 

joy of having lived so long in it together. Then, 
out of doors, in every corner of La Souleiade, royal 
summer had set up his blue tent, dazzling with 
gold. In the morning, in the embalsamed walks on 
the pine grove ; at noon under the dark shadow of 
the plane trees, lulled by the murmur of the foun- 
tain ; in the evening on the cool terrace, or in the 
still warm threshing yard bathed in the faint blue 
radiance of the first stars, they lived with rapture 
their straitened life, their only ambition to live 
always together, indifferent to all else. The earth 
was theirs, with all its riches, its pomps, and its 
dominions, since they loved each other. 

Toward the end of August, however, matters 
grew bad again. At times they had rude awaken- 
ings, in the midst of this life without ties, without 
duties, without work; this life which was so sweet, 
but which it would be impossible, hurtful, they 
knew, to lead always. One evening Martine told 
them that she had only fifty francs left, and that 
they would have difficulty in managing for two 
weeks longer, even giving up wine. In addition 
to this the news was very serious; the notary 
Grandguillot was beyond a doubt insolvent, so that 
not even the personal creditors would receive any- 
thing. In the beginning they had relied on the 
house and the two farms which the fugitive notary 
had left perforce behind him, but it was now certain 
that this property was in his wife’s name and, while 
he was enjoying in Switzerland, as it was said, the 
beauty of the mountains, she lived on one of the 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


315 


farms, which she cultivated quietly, away from the 
annoyances of the liquidation. In short, it was 
infamous — a hundred families ruined; left with- 
out bread. An assignee had indeed been ap- 
pointed, but he had served only to confirm the 
disaster, since not a centime of assets had been 
discovered. And Pascal, with his usual indiffer- 
ence, neglected even to go and see him to speak to 
him about his own case, thinking that he already 
knew all that there was to be known about it, and 
that it was useless to stir up this ugly business, 
since there was neither honor nor profit to be 
derived from it. 

Then, indeed, the future looked threatening at 
La Souleiade. Black want stared them in the face. 
And Clotilde, who, in reality, had a great deal of 
good sense, was the first to take alarm. She main- 
tained her cheerfulness while Pascal was present, 
but, more prescient than he, in her womanly tender- 
ness, she fell into a state of absolute terror if he 
left her for an instant, asking herself what was to 
become of him at his age with so heavy a burden 
upon his shoulders. For several days she cherished 
in secret a project — to work and earn money, a great 
deal of money, with her pastels. People had so 
often praised her extraordinary and original talent 
that, taking Martine into her confidence, she sent 
her one fine morning to offer some of her fantastic 
bouquets to the color dealer of the Cours Sauvaire, 
who was a relation, it was said, of a Parisian artist. 
It was with the express condition that nothing was 


316 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


to be exhibited in Plassans, that everything was to 
be sent to a distance. But the result was disastrous ; 
the merchant was frightened by the strangeness of 
the design, and by the fantastic boldness of the 
execution, and he declared that they would never 
sell. This threw her into despair; great tears 
welled to her eyes. Of what use was she? It was 
a grief and a humiliation to be good for nothing. 
And the servant was obliged to console her, saying 
that no doubt all women were not born for work; 
that some grew like the flowers in the gardens, for 
the sake of their fragrance ; while others were the 
wheat of the fields that is ground up and used for 
food. 

Martine, meantime, cherished another project ; it 
was to urge the doctor to resume his practice. At 
last she mentioned it to Clotilde, who at once 
pointed out to her the difficulty, the impossibility 
almost, of such an attempt. She and Pascal had 
been talking about his doing so only the day before. 
He, too, was anxious, and had thought of work as 
the only chance of salvation. The idea of opening 
an office again was naturally the first that had 
presented itself to him. But he had been for so 
long a time the physician of the poor! How could 
he venture now to ask payment when it was so 
many years since he had left off doing so? Besides, 
was it not too late, at his age, to recommence a 
career? not to speak of the absurd rumors that had 
been circulating about him, the name which they 
had given him of a crack-brained genius. He would 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


317 


not find a single patient now, it would be a useless 
cruelty to force him to make an attempt which 
would assuredly result only in a lacerate^ heart and 
empty hands. Clotilde, on the contrary, had used 
all her influence to turn him from the idea. Mar- 
tine comprehended the reasonableness of these 
objections, and she too declared that he must be 
prevented from running the risk of so great a 
chagrin. But while she was speaking a new idea 
occurred to her, as she suddenly remembered an old 
register which she had met with in a press, and in 
which she had in former times entered the doctor’s 
visits. For a long time it was she who had kept 
the'accounts. There were so many patients who had 
never paid that a list of them filled three of the 
large pages of the register. Why, then, now that 
they had fallen into misfortune, should they not ask 
from these people the money which they justly 
owed? It might be done without saying anything 
to monsieur, who had never been willing to appeal 
to the law. And this time Clotilde approved of her 
idea. It was a perfect conspiracy. Clotilde con- 
sulted the register, and made out the bills, and the 
servant presented them. But nowhere did she 
receive a sou ; they told her at every door that they 
would look over the account ; that they would stop 
in and see the doctor himself. Ten days passed, 
no one came, and there were now only six francs in 
the house, barely enough to live upon for two or 
three days longer. 

Martine, when she returned with empty hands on 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


3i8 

the following day from a new application to an old 
patient, took Clotilde aside and told her that she 
had just been talking with Mme. Felicite at the 
corner of the Rue de la Banne. The latter had 
undoubtedly been watching for her. She had not 
again set foot in La Souleiade. Not even the mis- 
fortune which had befallen her son — the sudden 
loss of his money, of which the whole town was 
talking — had brought her to him ; she still continued 
stern and indignant. But she waited in trembling 
excitement, she maintained her attitude as an 
offended mother only in the certainty that she 
would at last have Pascal at her feet; shrewdly cal- 
culating that he would sooner or later be compelled 
to appeal to her for assistance. When he had not a 
sou left, when he knocked at her door, then she 
would dictate her terms; he should marry Clotilde, 
or, better still, she would demand the departure of 
the latter. But the days passed, and he did not 
come. And this was why she had stopped Martine, 
assuming a pitying air, asking what news there was, 
and seeming to be surprised that they had not had 
recourse to her purse, while giving it to be under- 
stood that her dignity forbade her to take the first 
step. 

“You should speak to monsieur, and persuade 
him,” ended the servant. And indeed, why should 
he not appeal to his mother? That would be 
entirely natural. 

“Oh ! never would I undertake such a commis- 
sion,” cried Clotilde. “Master would be angry, and 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


319 


with reason. I truly believe he would die of starva- 
tion before he would eat grandmother s bread.” 

But on the evening of the second day after this, 
at dinner, as Martine was putting on the table a 
piece of boiled beef left over from the day before, 
she gave them notice. 

“I have no more money, monsieur, and to-morrow 
there will be only potatoes, without oil or butter. 
It is three weeks now that you have had only water 
to drink; now you will have to do without meat.” 

They were still cheerful, they could still jest. 

“Have you salt, my good girl?” 

“Oh, that ; yes, monsieur, there is still a little 
left.” 

“Well, potatoes and salt are very good when one 
is hungry.” 

That night, however, Pascal noticed that Clotilde 
was feverish ; this was the hour in which they ex- 
changed confidences, and she ventured to tell him 
of her anxiety on his account, on her own, on that 
of the whole house. What was going to become of 
them when all their resources should be exhausted? 
For a moment she thought of speaking to him of 
his mother. But she was afraid, and she contented 
herself with confessing to him what she and Martine 
had done — the old register examined, the bills made 
out and sent, the money asked everywhere in vain. 
In other circumstances he would have been greatly 
annoyed and very angry at this confession ; of- 
fended that they should have acted without his 
knowledge, and contrary to the attitude he had 


3 2 ° 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


maintained during his whole professional life. He 
remained for a long time silent, strongly agitated, 
and this would have sufficed to prove how great 
must be his secret anguish at times, under his 
apparent indifference to poverty. Then he forgave 
Clotilde, clasping her wildly to his breast, and finally 
he said that she had done right, that they could not 
continue to live much longer as they were living, in 
a destitution which increased every day. Then 
they fell into silence, each trying to think of a 
means of procuring the money necessary for their 
daily wants, each suffering keenly; she, desperate 
at the thought of the tortures that awaited him ; 
he unable to accustom himself to the idea of seeing 
her wanting bread. Was their happiness forever 
ended, then? Was poverty going to blight their 
spring with its chill breath? 

At breakfast, on the following day, they ate only 
fruit. The doctor was very silent during the morn- 
ing, a prey to a visible struggle. And it was not 
until three o’clock that he took a resolution. 

“Come, we must stir ourselves,” he said to his 
companion. “I do not wish you to fast this even- 
ing again; so put on your hat, we will go out 
together.” 

She looked at him, waiting for an explanation. 

“Yes, since they owe us money, and have refused 
to give it to you, I will see whether they will also 
refuse to give it to me.” 

His hands trembled ; the thought of demanding 
payment in this way, after so many years, evidently 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


321 


made him suffer terribly ; but he forced a smile, he 
affected to be very brave. And she, who knew 
from the trembling of his voice the extent of his 
sacrifice, had tears in her eyes. 

“No, no, master; don’t go if it makes you suffer 
so much. Martine can go again.” 

But the servant, who was present, approved 
highly of monsieur’s intention. 

“And why should not monsieur go? There’s no 
shame in asking what is owed to one, is there? 
Everyone should have his own ; for my part, I think 
it quite right that monsieur should show at last that 
he is a man.” 

Then, as before, in their hours of happiness, old 
King David, as Pascal jestingly called himself, left 
the house, leaning on Abishag’s arm. Neither of 
them was yet in rags; he still wore his tightly but- 
toned overcoat ; she had on her pretty linen gown 
with red spots, but doubtless the consciousness of 
their poverty lowered them in their own estimation, 
making them feel that they were now only two poor 
people who occupied a very insignificant place in 
the world, for they walked along by the houses, 
shunning observation. The sunny streets were 
almost deserted. A few curious glances embar- 
rassed them. They did not hasten their steps, 
however; only their hearts were oppressed at the 
thought of the visits they were about to make. 

Pascal resolved to begin with an old magistrate 
whom he had tfeated for an affection of the liver. 
He entered the house, leaving Clotilde sitting on a 


3 22 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


bench in the Cours Sauvaire. But he was greatly 
relieved when the magistrate, anticipating his 
demand, told him that he did not receive his rents 
until October, and that he would pay him then. 
At the house of an old lady of seventy, a paralytic, 
the rebuff was of a different kind. She was of- 
fended because her account had been sent to her 
through a servant who had been impolite; so that 
he hastened to offer her his excuses, giving her all 
the time she desired. Then he climbed up three 
flights of stairs to the apartment of a clerk in the 
tax collector’s office, whom he found still ill, and so 
poor that he did not even venture to make his 
demand. Then followed a mercer, a lawyer’s wife, 
an oil merchant, a baker — all well-to-do people ; and 
all turned him away, some with excuses, others by 
denying him admittance; a few even pretended not 
to know what he meant. There remained the 
Marquise de Valqueyras, the sole representative of 
a very ancient family, a widow with a girl of ten, 
who was very rich, and whose avarice was no- 
torious. He had left her for the last, for he was 
greatly afraid of her. Finally he knocked at the 
door of her ancient mansion, at the foot of the 
Cours Sauvaire, a massive structure of the time of 
Mazarin. He remained so long in the house that 
Clotilde, who was walking under the trees, at last 
became uneasy. 

When he finally made his appearance, at the 
end of a full half hour, she said jestingly, greatly 
relieved : 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


323 


“Why, what was the matter? Had she no 
money?” 

But here, too, he had been unsuccessful ; she 
complained that her tenants did not pay her. 

“Imagine,” he continued, in explanation of his 
long absence, “the little girl is ill. I am afraid that 
it is the beginning of a gastric fever. So she wished 
me to see the child, and I examined her.” 

A smile which she could not suppress came to 
Clotilde’s lips. 

“And you prescribed for her?” 

“Of course; could I do otherwise?” 

She took his arm again, deeply affected, and he 
felt her press it against her heart. For a time they 
walked on aimlessly. It was all over; they had 
knocked at every debtor’s door, and nothing now 
remained for them to do but to return home with 
empty hands. But this Pascal refused to do, deter- 
mined that Clotilde should have something more 
than the potatoes and water which awaited them. 
When they ascended tlie Cours Sauvaire, they turned 
to the left, to the new town ; drifting now whither 
cruel fate led them. 

“Listen,” said Pascal at last; “I have an idea. If 
I were to speak to Ramond he would willingly lend 
us a thousand francs, which we could return to him 
when our affairs are arranged.” 

She did not answer at once. Ramond, whom she 
had rejected, who was now married and settled in a 
house in the new town, in a fair way to become the 
fashionable physician of the place, and to make a 


324 DOCTOR RASCAL. 

fortune! She knew, indeed, that he had a magnan- 
imous soul and a kind heart. If he had not visited 
them again it had been undoubtedly through deli- 
cacy. Whenever they chanced to meet, he saluted 
them with so admiring an air, he seemed so pleased 
to see their happiness. 

“Would that be disagreeable to you?” asked Pas- 
cal ingenuously. For his part, he would have 
thrown open to the young physician his house, his 
purse, and his heart. 

“No, no,” she answered quickly. “There has 
never been anything between us but affection and 
frankness. I think I gave him a great deal of pain, 
but he has forgiven me. You are right; we have 
no other friend. It is to Ramond that we must 
apply.” 

Ill luck pursued them, however. Ramond was 
absent from home, attending a consultation at 
Marseilles, and he would not be back until the fol- 
lowing evening. And it was young Mme. Ramond, 
an old friend of Clotilde’s, some three years her 
junior, who received them. She seemed a little 
embarrassed, but she was very amiable, notwith- 
standing. But the doctor, naturally, did not prefer 
his request, and contented himself with saying, in 
explanation of his visit, that he had missed Ramond. 
When they were in the street again, Pascal and 
Clotilde felt themselves once more abandoned and 
alone. Where now should they turn? What new 
effort should they make? And they walked on 
again aimlessly. 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


325 


“I did not tell you, master,” Clotilde at last ven- 
tured to murmur, “but it seems that Martine met 
grandmother the other day. Yes, grandmother has 
been uneasy about us. She asked Martine why we 
did not go to her, if we were in want. And see, 
here is her house.” 

They were, in fact, in the Rue de la Banne. 
They could see the corner of the Place de la Sous- 
Prefecture. But he at once silenced her. 

‘‘Never, do you hear! Nor shall you go either. 
You say that because it grieves you to see me in 
this poverty. My heart, too, is heavy, to think that 
you also are in want; that you also suffer. But it 
is better to suffer than to do a thing that would 
leave one an eternal remorse. I will not. I 
cannot.” 

They emerged from the Rue de la Banne, and 
entered the old quarter. 

“I would a thousand times rather apply to a 
stranger. Perhaps we still have friends, even if 
they are only among the poor.” 

And resolved to beg, David continued his walk, 
leaning on the arm of Abishag; the old mendicant 
king went from door to door, leaning on the shoul- 
der of the loving subject whose youth was now his 
only support. It was almost six o’clock; the heat 
had abated ; the narrow streets were filling with 
people; and in this populous quarter where they 
were loved, they were everywhere greeted with 
smiles. Something of pity was mingled with the 
admiration they awakened, for everyone knew of 


3 2 6 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


their ruin. But they seemed of a nobler beauty 
than before, he- all white, she all blond, pressing 
close to each other in their misfortune. They 
seemed more united, more one with each other 
than ever, holding their heads erect, proud of their 
glorious love, though touched by misfortune; he 
shaken, while she, with a courageous heart, sus- 
tained him. And in spite of the poverty that had 
so suddenly overtaken them they walked without 
shame, very poor and very great, with the sorrowful 
smile under which they concealed the desolation of 
their souls. Workmen in dirty blouses passed them 
by, who had more money in their pockets than they. 
No one ventured to offer them the sou which is. not 
refused to those who are hungry. At the Rue 
Canoquin they stopped at the house of Guiraude. 
She had died the week before. Two other attempts 
which they made failed. They were reduced now 
to consider where they could borrow ten francs. 
They had been walking about the town for three 
hours, but they could not resolve to go home empty- 
handed. 

Ah, this Plassans, with its Cours Sauvaire, its 
Rue de Rome, and its Rue de la Banne, dividing it 
into three quarters; this Plassans, with its windows 
always closed ; this sun-baked town, dead in appear- 
ance, but which concealed under this sleeping sur- 
face a whole nocturnal life of the clubhouse and the 
gaming table. They walked through it three times 
more with slackened pace, on this clear, calm close 
of a glowing August day. In the yard of the coach 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


327 


office a few old stagecoaches, which still plied be- 
tween the town and the mountain villages, were 
standing unharnessed; and under the thick shade of 
the plane trees at the doors of the cafes, the custom- 
ers, who were to be seen from seven o’clock in the 
morning, looked after them smiling. In the new 
town, too, the servants came and stood at the doors 
of the wealthy houses; they met with less sympathy 
here than in the deserted streets of the Quartier St. 
Marc, whose antique houses maintained a friendly 
silence. They returned to the heart of the old 
quarter where they were most liked; they went 3s 
far as St. Saturnin, the cathedral, whose apse was 
shaded by the garden of the .chapter, a sweet and 
peaceful solitude, from which a beggar drove them 
by himself asking an alms from them. They were 
building rapidly in the neighborhood of the railway 
station ; a new quarter was growing up there, and 
they bent their steps in that direction. Then they 
returned a last time to the Place de la Sous- 
Prefecture, with a sudden reawakening of hope, 
thinking that they might meet someone who would 
offer them money. But they were followed only 
by the indulgent smile of the town, at seeing them 
so united and so beautiful. Only one woman had 
tears in her eyes, foreseeing, perhaps, the sufferings 
that awaited them. The stones of the Viorne, the 
little sharp paving stones, wounded their feet. And 
they had at last to return to La Souleiade, without 
having succeeded in obtaining anything, the old 
mendicant king and his submissive subject ; Abishag, 


32 $ 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


in the flower of her youth, leading back David, old 
and despoiled of his wealth, and weary from having 
walked the streets in vain. 

It was eight o’clock, and Martine, who was wait- 
ing for them, comprehended that she would have 
no cooking to do this evening. She pretended that 
she had dined, and as she looked ill Pascal sent her 
at once to bed. 

“We do not need you,” said Clotilde. “As the 
potatoes are on the fire we can take them up very 
well ourselves.” 

The servant, who was feverish and out of humor, 
yielded. She muttered some indistinct words- — 
when people had eaten up everything what was the 
use of sitting down to table? Then, before shutting 
herself into her room, she added : 

“Monsieur, there is no more hay for Bonhomme. 
I thought he was looking badly a little while ago; 
monsieur ought to go and see him.” 

Pascal and Clotilde, filled with uneasiness, went 
to the stable. The old horse was, in fact, lying on 
the straw in the somnolence of expiring old age. 
They had not taken him out for six months past, 
for his legs, stiff with rheumatism, refused to sup- 
port him, and he had become completely blind. 
No one could understand why the doctor kept the 
old beast. Even Martine had at last said that he 
ought to be slaughtered, if only through pity. 
But Pascal and Clotilde cried out at this, as much 
excited as if it had been proposed to them to put an 
end to some aged relative who was not dying fast 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


3 2 9 


enough. No, no, he had served them for more than 
a quarter of a century; he should die comfortably 
with them, like the worthy fellow he had always 
been. And to-night the doctor did not scorn to 
examine him, as if he had never attended any other 
patients than animals. He lifted up his hoofs, 
looked at his gums, and listened to the beating of 
his heart. 

“No, there is nothing the matter with him,'’ he 
said at last. “It is simply old age. Ah, my poor 
old fellow, I think, indeed, we shall never again 
travel the roads together.” 

The idea that there was no more hay distressed 
Clotilde. But Pascal reassured her — an animal of 
that age, that no longer moved about, needed so 
little. She stooped down and took a few handfuls 
of grass from a heap which the servant had left 
there, and both were rejoiced when Bonhomme 
deigned, solely and simply through friendship, as it 
seemed, to eat the grass out of her hand. 

“Oh,” she said, laughing, “so you still have an 
appetite! You cannot be very sick, then; you 
must not try to work upon our feelings. Good- 
night, and sleep well.” 

And they left him to his slumbers after having 
each given him, as usual, a hearty kiss on either 
side of his nose. 

Night fell, and an idea occurred to them, in order 
not to remain downstairs in the empty house — to 
close up everything and eat their dinner upstairs. 
Clotilde quickly took up the dish of potatoes, the 


330 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


salt cellar, and a fine decanter of water; while 
Pascal took charge of a basket of grapes, the first 
which they had yet gathered from an early vine at 
the foot of the terrace. They closed the door, and 
laid the cloth on a little table, putting the potatoes 
in the middle between the salt cellar and the 
decanter, and the basket of grapes on a chair beside 
them. And it was a wonderful feast, which re- 
minded them of the delicious breakfast they had 
made on the morning on which Martine had obsti- 
nately shut herself up in her room, and refused to 
answer them. They experienced the same delight 
as then at being alone, at waiting upon themselves, 
at eating from the same plate, sitting close beside 
each other. This evening, which they had antici- 
pated with so much dread, had in store for them 
the most delightful hours of their existence. As 
soon as they found themselves at home in the large 
friendly room, as far removed from the town which 
they had just been scouring as if they had been 
a hundred leagues away from it, all uneasiness and 
all sadness vanished — even to the recollection of the 
wretched afternoon wasted in useless wanderings. 
They were once more indifferent to all that was 
not their affection ; they no longer remembered 
that they had lost their fortune; that they might 
have to hunt up a friend on the morrow in order 
to be able to dine in the evening. Why torture 
themselves with fears of coming want, when all they 
required to enjoy the greatest possible happiness was 
to be together? 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


331 


But Pascal felt a sudden terror. 

“My God! arid we dreaded this evening so 
greatly! Is it wise to be happy in this way? Who 
knows what to-morrow may have in store for us?’’ 

But she put her little hand over his mouth ; she 
desired that he should have one more evening of 
perfect happiness. 

“No, no, to-morrow we shall love each other as 
we love each other to-day. Love me with all your 
strength, as I love you.” 

And never had they eaten with more relish. She 
displayed the appetite of a healthy young girl with 
a good digestion ; she ate the potatoes with a 
hearty appetite, laughing, thinking them delicious, 
better than the most vaunted delicacies. He, too, 
recovered the appetite of his youthful days. They 
drank with delight deep draughts of pure water. 
Then the grapes for dessert filled them with admira- 
tion ; these grapes so fresh, this blood of the earth 
which the sun had touched with gold. They ate to 
excess; they became drunk on water and fruit, and 
more than all on gayety. They did not remember 
ever before to have enjoyed such a feast together; 
even the famous breakfast they had made, with its 
luxuries of cutlets and bread and wine, had not 
given them this intoxication, this joy in living, 
when to be together was happiness enough, chang- 
ing the china to dishes of gold, and the miserable 
food to celestial fare such as not even the gods 
enjoyed. 

It was now quite dark, but they did not light the 


3 32 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


lamp. Through the wide open windows they could 
see the vast summer sky. The night breeze 
entered, still warm and laden with a faint odor of 
lavender. The moon had just risen above the 
horizon, large and round, flooding the room with a 
silvery light, in which they saw each other as in a 
dream light infinitely bright and sweet. 


XI. 


But on the following day their disquietude all 
returned. They were now obliged to go in debt. 
Martine obtained on credit bread, wine, and a little 
meat, much to her shame, be it said, forced as she 
was to maneuver and tell lies, for no one was igno- 
rant of the ruin that had overtaken the house. The 
doctor had indeed thought of mortgaging La Sou- 
leiade, but only as a last resource. All he now 
possessed was this property, which was worth 
twenty thousand francs, but for which he would 
perhaps not get fifteen thousand, if he should sell it ; 
and when these should be spent black want would 
be before them, the street, without even a stone of 
their own on which to lay their heads. Clotilde 
therefore begged Pascal to wait and not to take any 
irrevocable step so long as things were not utterly 
desperate. 

Three or four days passed. It was the beginning 
of September, and the weather unfortunately 
changed ; terrible storms ravaged the entire coun- 
try ; a part of the garden wall was blown down, and 
as Pascal was unable to rebuild it, the yawning 
breach remained. Already they were beginning to 
be rude at the baker’s. And one morning the old 
servant came home with the meat from the butch- 


333 


334 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


er’s, in tears, saying that he had given her the 
refuse. A few days more and they would be unable 
to obtain anything on credit. It had become abso- 
lutely necessary to consider how they should find 
the money for their small daily expenses. 

One Monday morning, the beginning of another 
week of torture, Clotilde was very restless. A 
struggle seemed to be going on within her, and it 
was only when she saw Pascal refuse, at breakfast, 
his share of a piece of beef which had been left 
over from the day before that she at last came to a 
decision. Then with a calm and resolute air, she 
went out after breakfast with Martine, after quietly 
putting into the basket of the latter a little package 
— some articles of dress which she was giving her, 
she said. 

When she returned two hours later she was very 
pale. But her large eyes, so clear and frank, were 
shining. She went up to the doctor at once and 
made her confession. 

“I must ask your forgiveness, master, for I have 
just been disobeying you, and I know that I am 
going to pain you greatly.” 

“Why, what have you been doing?” he asked 
uneasily, not understanding what she meant. 

Slowly, without removing her eyes from him, she 
drew from her pocket an envelope, from which she 
took some banknotes. A sudden intuition enlight- 
ened him, and he cried : 

“Ah, my God ! the jewels, the presents I gave 
you !” 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


335 


And he, who was usually so good-tempered and 
gentle, was convulsed with grief and anger. He 
seized her hands in his, crushing with almost brutal 
force the fingers which held the notes. 

“My God! what have you done, unhappy girl? 
It is my heart that you have sold, both our hearts, 
that had entered into those jewels, which you have 
given with them for money! The jewels which I 
gave you, the souvenirs of our divinest hours, your 
property, yours only, how can you wish me to take 
them back, to turn them to my profit? Can it be 
possible — have you thought of the anguish that this 
would give me?” 

“And you, master,” she answered gently, “do you 
think that I could consent to our remaining in the 
unhappy situation in which we are, in want of every- 
thing, while I had these rings and necklaces and 
earrings laid away in the bottom of a drawer? 
Why, my whole being would rise in protest. I should 
think myself a miser, a selfish wretch, if I had kept 
them any longer. And, although it was a grief for 
me to part with them — ah, yes, I confess it, so great 
a grief that I could hardly find the courage to do it 
— I am certain that I have only done what I ought 
to have done as an obedient and loving woman.” 

And as he still grasped her hands, tears came to 
her eyes, and she added in the same gentle voice 
and with a faint smile: 

“Don’t press so hard, you hurt me.” 

Then repentant, and deeply moved, Pascal, too, 
wept. 


33 6 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


“Iam a brute to get angry in this way. You 
acted rightly ; you could not do otherwise. But for- 
give me ; it was hard for me to see you despoil your- 
self. Give me your hands, your poor hands, and let 
me kiss away the marks of my stupid violence.” 

He took her hands again in his tenderly ; he cov- 
ered them with kisses; he thought them inestimably 
precious, so delicate and bare, thus stripped of their 
rings. Consoled now, and joyous, she told him of 
her escapade — how she had taken Martine into her 
confidence, and how both had gone to the dealer 
who had sold him the corsage of point d’Alengon, 
and how after interminable examining and bargain- 
ing the woman had given six thousand francs for all 
the jewels. Again he repressed a gesture of despair 
— six thousand francs! when the jewels had cost 
him more than three times that amount — twenty 
thousand francs at the very least. 

“Listen,” he said to her at last; “I will take this 
money, since, in the goodness of your heart, you 
have brought it to me. But it is clearly understood 
that it is yours. I swear to you that I will, for the 
future, be more miserly than Martine herself. I will 
give her only the few sous that are absolutely neces- 
sary for our maintenance, and you will find in the 
desk all that may be left of this sum, if I should 
never be able to complete it and give it back to you 
entire.” 

He clasped her in an embrace that still trembled 
with emotion. Presently, lowering his voice to a 
whisper, he said ; 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


337 


“And did you sell everything, absolutely every- 
thing?” 

Without speaking, she disengaged herself a little 
from his embrace, and put her fingers to her throat, 
with her pretty gesture, smiling and blushing. 
Finally, she drew out the slender chain on which 
shone the seven pearls, like milky stars. Then she 
put it back again out of sight. 

He, too, blushed and a great joy filled his heart. 
He embraced her passionately. 

“Ah !” he cried, “how good you are, and how I 
love you !” 

But from this time forth the recollection of the 
jewels which had been sold rested like a weight 
upon his heart ; and he could not look at the money 
in his desk without pain. He was haunted by the 
thought of approaching want, inevitable want, and 
by a still more bitter thought — the thought of his 
age, of his sixty years which rendered him useless, 
incapable of earning a comfortable living for a wife; 
he had been suddenly and rudely awakened from 
his illusory dream of eternal love to the disquieting 
reality. He had fallen unexpectedly into poverty, 
and he felt himself very old — this terrified him and 
filled him with a sort of remorse, of desperate rage 
against himself, as if he had been guilty of a crime. 
And this embittered his every hour; if through 
momentary forgetfulness he permitted himself to 
indulge in a little gayety his distress soon returned 
with greater poignancy than ever, bringing with it 
a sudden and inexplicable sadness. He did not 


33 8 DOCTOR PASCAL. 

dare to question himself, and his dissatisfaction with 
himself and his suffering increased every day. 

Then a frightful revelation came to him. One 
morning, when he was alone, he received a letter 
bearing the Plassans postmark, the superscription 
on which he examined with surprise, not recogniz- 
ing the writing. This letter was not signed ; and 
after reading a few lines he made an angry move- 
ment as if to tear it up and throw it away; but he 
sat down trembling instead, and read it to the end. 
The style was perfectly courteous; the long phrases 
rolled on, measured and carefully worded, like dip- 
lomatic phrases, whose only aim is to convince. It 
was demonstrated to him with a superabundance of 
arguments that the scandal of La Souleiade had 
lasted too long already. If passion, up to a certain 
point, explained the fault, yet a man of his age and 
in his situation was rendering himself contemptible 
by persisting in wrecking the happiness of the 
young relative whose trustfulness he abused. No 
one was ignorant of the ascendency which he had 
acquired over her; it was admitted that she gloried 
in sacrificing herself for him ; but ought he not, on 
his side, to comprehend that it was impossible that* 
she should love an old man, that what she felt was 
merely pity and gratitude, and that it was high time 
to deliver her from this senile love, which would 
finally leave her with a dishonored name? Since 
he could not even assure her a small fortune, the 
writer hoped he would act like an honorable man, 
and have the strength to separate from her, through 


doctor Rascal. 


339 


Consideration for her happiness, if it were not yet 
too late. And the letter concluded with the reflec- 
tion that evil conduct was always punished in the 
end. 

From the first sentence Pascal felt that this 
anonymous letter came from his mother. Old 
Mme. Rougon must have dictated it; he could hear 
in it the very inflections of her voice. But after 
having begun the letter angry and indignant, he 
finished it pale and trembling, seized by the shiver 
which now passed through him continually and 
without apparent cause. The letter was right, it 
enlightened him cruelly regarding the source of his 
mental distress, showing him that it was remorse 
for keeping Clotilde with him, old and poor as he 
was. He got up and walked over to a mirror, 
before which he stood for a long time, his eyes 
gradually filling with tears of despair at sight of his 
wrinkles and his white beard. The feeling of terror 
which arose within him, the mortal chill which 
invaded his heart, was caused by the thought that 
separation had become necessary, inevitable. He 
repelled the thought, he felt that he would never 
have the strength for a separation, but it still 
returned; he would never now pass a single day 
without being assailed by it, without being torn by 
the struggle between his love and his reason, until 
the terrible day when he should become resigned, 
his strength and his tears exhausted. In his pres- 
ent weakness, he trembled merely at the thought of 
one day having this courage. And all was indeed 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


34 6 

over, the irrevocable had begun; he was filled with 
fear for Clotilde, so young and so beautiful, and all 
there was left him now was the duty of saving her 
from himself. 

Then, haunted by every word, by every phrase of 
the letter, he tortured himself at first by trying to 
persuade himself that she did not love him, that all 
she felt for him was pity and gratitude. It would 
make the rupture more easy to him, he thought, if 
he were once convinced that she sacrificed herself, 
and that in keeping her with him longer he was only 
gratifying his monstrous selfishness. But it was in 
vain that- he studied her, that he subjected her to 
proofs, she remained as tender and devoted as ever, 
making the dreaded decision still more difficult. 
Then he pondered over all the causes that vaguely, 
but ceaselessly urged their separation. The life 
which they had been leading for months past, this 
life without ties or duties, without work of any 
sort, was not good. He thought no longer of him- 
self, he considered himself good for nothing now 
but to go away and bury himself out of sight in 
some remote corner; but for her was it not an inju- 
rious life, a life which would deteriorate her charac- 
ter and weaken her will? And suddenly he saw 
himself in fancy dying, leaving her alone to perish 
of hunger in the streets. No, no! this would be a 
crime; he could not, for the sake of the happiness of 
his few remaining days, bequeath to her this heri- 
tage of shame and misery. 

One morning Clotilde went for a walk in the 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


341 


neighborhood, from which she returned greatly 
agitated, pale and trembling, and as soon as she was 
upstairs in the workroom, she almost fainted in 
Pascal’s arms, faltering: 

“Oh, my God ! oh, my God ! those women !” 

Terrified, he pressed her with questions. 

“Come, tell me! What has happened?” 

A flush mounted to her face. She flung her arms 
around his neck and hid her head on his shoulder. 

“It was those women! Reaching a shady spot, 
I was closing my parasol, and I had the mis- 
fortune to throw down a child. And they all rose 
against me, crying out such things, oh, such things 
— things that I cannot repeat, that I could not 
understand !” 

She burst into sobs. He was livid; he could find 
nothing to say to her; he kissed her wildly, weep- 
ing like herself. He pictured to himself the whole 
scene; he saw her pursued, hooted at, reviled. 
Presently he faltered : 

“It is my fault, it is through me you suffer. 
Listen, we will go away from here, far, far away, 
where we shall not be known, where you will be 
honored, where you will be happy.” 

But seeing him weep, she recovered her calmness 
by a violent effort. And drying her tears, she 
said : 

“Ah ! I have behaved like a coward in telling you 
all this. After promising myself that I would say 
nothing of it to you. But when I found myself at 
home again, my anguish was so great that it all 


342 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


came out. But you see now it is all over, don t 
grieve about it. I love you.” 

She smiled, and putting her arms about him she 
kissed him in her turn, trying to soothe his despair. 

“I love you. I love you so dearly that it will 
console me for everything. There is only you in 
the world, what matters anything that is not you? 
You are so good ; you make me so happy !” 

But he continued to weep, and she, too, began to 
weep again, and there was a moment of infinite 
sadness, of anguish, in which they mingled their 
kisses and their tears. 

Pascal, when she left him alone for an instant, 
thought himself a wretch. He could no longer be 
the cause of misfortune to this child, whom he 
adored. And on the evening of the same day an 
event took place which brought about the solution 
hitherto sought in vain, with the fear of finding it. 
After dinner Martine beckoned him aside, and gave 
him a letter, with all sorts of precautions, saying: 

“I met Mme. Felicity, and she charged me to 
give you this letter, monsieur, and she told me to 
tell you that she would have brought it to you her- 
self, only that regard for her reputation prevented 
her from returning here. She begs you to send her 
back M. Maxime’s letter, letting her know made- 
moiselle’s answer.” 

It was, in fact, a letter from Maxime, and Mme. 
F£licit£, glad to have received it, used it as a new 
means of conquering her son, after having waited in 
vain for misery to deliver him up to her, repentant 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


343 


and imploring. As neither Pascal nor Clotilde had 
come to demand aid or succor from her, she had 
once more changed her plan, returning to her old 
idea of separating them ; and, this time, the oppor- 
tunity seemed to her decisive. Maxime’s letter was 
a pressing one; he urged his grandmother to plead 
his cause with his sister. Ataxia had declared itself ; 
he was able to walk now only leaning on his serv- 
ant’s arm. His solitude terrified him, and he 
urgently entreated his sister to come to him. He 
wished to have her with him as a rampart against 
his father’s abominable designs; as a sweet and 
upright woman after all, who would take* care of him. 
The letter gave it to be understood that if she con- 
ducted herself well toward him she would have no 
reason to repent it ; and ended by reminding the 
young girl of the promise she had made him, at the 
time of his visit to Plassans, to come to him, if the 
day ever arrived when he really needed her. 

Pascal turned cold. He read the four pages over 
again. Here an opportunity to separate presented 
itself, acceptable to him and advantageous for Clo- 
tilde, so easy and so natural that they ought to ac- 
cept it at once; yet, in spite of all his reasoning he 
felt so weak, so irresolute still that his limbs trem- 
bled under him, and he was obliged to sit down for 
a moment. But he wished to be heroic, and, con- 
trolling himself, he called to his companion. 

“ Here ! ” he said, “ read this letter which your 
grandmother has sent me.” 

Clotilde read the letter attentively to the end. 


344 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


without a word, without a sign. Then she said 
simply : 

“Well, you are going to answer it, are you not? 
I refuse.” 

He was obliged to exercise a strong effort of self- 
control to avoid uttering a great cry of joy, as he 
pressed her to his heart. As if it were another 
person who spoke, he heard himself saying quietly : 

“You refuse — impossible! You must reflect. 
Let us wait till to-morrow to give an answer; and 
let us talk it over, shall we?” 

Surprised, she cried excitedly: 

“Part from each other! and why? And would 
you really consent to it? What folly! we love each 
other, and you would have me leave you and go 
away where no one cares for me! How could you 
think of such a thing? It would be stupid.” 

He avoided touching on this side of the question, 
and hastened to speak of promises made — of duty. 

“Remember, my dear, how greatly affected you 
were when I told you that Maxime was in danger. 
And think of him now, struck down by disease, 
helpless and alone, calling you to his side. Can 
you abandon him in that situation? You have a 
duty to fulfill toward him.” 

“A duty ? ” she cried. “ Have I any duties toward 
a brother who has never occupied himself with me? 
My only duty is where my heart is.” 

“But you have promised. I have promised for 
you. I have said that you were rational, and you 
are not going to belie my words.” 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


345 


“Rational? It is you who are not rational. It is 
not rational to separate when to do so would make 
us both die of grief.” 

And with an angry gesture she closed the discus- 
sion, saying: 

“Besides, what is the use of talking about it? 
There is nothing simpler; it is only necessary to 
say a single word. Answer me. Are you tired of 
me? Do you wish to send me away?” 

He uttered a cry. 

“Send you away! I! Great God!” 

“Then it is all settled. If you do not send me 
away I shall remain.” 

She lafoghed now, and, running to her desk, wrote 
in red pencil across her brother’s letter two words — 
“I refuse”; then she called Martine and insisted 
upon her taking the letter back at once. Pascal 
was radiant; a wave of happiness so intense inun- 
dated his being that he let her have her way. The 
joy of keeping her with him deprived him even of 
his power of reasoning. 

But that very night, what remorse did he not feel 
for having been so cowardly ! He had again yielded 
to his longing for happiness. A deathlike sweat 
broke out upon him when he saw her in imagination 
far away; himself alone, without her, without that 
caressing and subtle essence that pervaded the 
atmosphere when she was near; her breath, her 
brightness, her courageous rectitude, and the dear 
presence, physical and mental, which had now 
become as necessary to his life as the light of day 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


346 

itself. She must leave him, and he must find the 
strength to die of it. He despised himself for his 
want of courage, he judged the situation with terri- 
ble clear-sightedness. All was ended. An honor- 
able existence and a fortune awaited her with her 
brother; he could not carry his senile selfishness so 
far as to keep her any longer in the misery in which 
he was, to be scorned and despised. And fainting 
at the thought of all he was losing, he swore to 
himself that he would be strong, that he would not 
accept the sacrifice of this child, that he would 
restore her to happiness and to life, in her own 
despite. 

And now the struggle of self-abnegation began. 
Some days passed ; he had demonstrated to her so 
clearly the rudeness of her “I refuse,” on Maxime’s 
letter, that she had written a long letter to her 
grandmother, explaining to her the reasons for her 
refusal. But still she would not leave La Souleiade. 
As Pascal had grown extremely parsimonious, in his 
desire to trench as little as possible on the money 
obtained by the sale of the jewels, she surpassed 
herself, eating her dry bread with merry laughter. 
One morning he surprised her giving lessons of 
economy to Martine. Twenty times a day she 
would look at him intently and then throw herself 
on his neck and cover his face with kisses, to com- 
bat the dreadful idea of a separation, which she saw 
always in his eyes. Then she had another argu- 
ment. One evening after dinner he was seized with 
a palpitation of the heart, and almost fainted. This 


DOCTOR RASCAL . 


347 


surprised him ; he had never suffered from the heart, 
and he believed it to be simply a return of his old 
nervous trouble. Since his great happiness he had 
felt less strong, with an odd sensation, as if some 
delicate hidden spring had snapped within him. 
Greatly alarmed, she hurried to his assistance. 
Well! now he would no doubt never speak again of 
her going away. When one loved people, and they 
were ill, one stayed with them to take care of them. 

The struggle thus became a daily, an hourly one. 
It was a continual assault made by affection, by 
devotion, by self-abnegation, in the one desire for 
another’s happiness. But while her kindness and 
tenderness made the thought of her departure only 
the more cruel for Pascal, he felt every day more 
and more strongly the necessity for it. His resolu- 
tion was now taken. But he remained at bay, 
trembling and hesitating as to the means of per- 
suading her. He pictured to himself her despair, 
her tears ; what should he do? how should he tell 
her? how could they bring themselves to give each 
other a last embrace, never to see each other again? 
And the days passed, and he could think of nothing, 
and he began once more to accuse himself of 
cowardice. 

Sometimes she would say jestingly, with a touch 
of affectionate malice: 

“Master, you are too kind-hearted not to keep 
*> 

me. 

But this vexed him ; he grew excited, and with 
gloomy despair answered : 


34§ 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


“No, no! don’t talk of my kindness. If I were 
really kind you would have been long ago with your 
brother, leading an easy and honorable life, with a 
bright and tranquil future before you, instead of 
obstinately remaining here, despised, poor, and 
without any prospect, to be the sad companion of 
an old fool like me! No, I am nothing but a 
coward and a dishonorable man!” 

She hastily stopped him. And it was in truth his 
kindness of heart, above all, that bled, that immense 
kindness of heart which sprang from his love of life, 
which he diffused over persons and things, in his 
continual care for the happiness of everyone and 
everything. To be kind, was not this to love her, 
to make her happy, at the price of his own happi- 
ness? This was the kindness which it was necessary 
for him to exercise, and which he felt that he would 
one day exercise, heroic and decisive. But like the 
wretch who has resolved upon suicide, he waited for 
the opportunity, the hour, and the means, to carry 
out his design. Early one morning, on going into 
the workroom, Clotilde was surprised to see Dr. Pas- 
cal seated at his table. It was many weeks since he 
had either opened a book or touched a pen. 

“Why! you are working?” she said. 

Without raising his head he answered absently : 

“Yes; this is the genealogical tree that I had not 
even brought up to. date.” 

She stood behind him for a few moments, looking 
at him writing. He was completing the notices of 
Aunt Dide, of Uncle Macquart, and of little 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


349 


Charles, writing the dates of their death. Then, as 
he did not stir, seeming not to know that she was 
there, waiting for the kisses and the smiles of other 
mornings, she walked idly over to the window and 
back again. 

So you are in earnest,” she said, “you are really 
working?” 

Certainly ; you see I ought to have noted down 
these deaths last month. And I have a heap of 
work waiting there for me.” 

She looked at him fixedly, with that steady 
inquiring gaze with which she sought to read his 
thoughts. 

“Very well, let us work. If you have papers to 
examine, or notes to copy, give them to me.” 

And from this day forth he affected to give him- 
self up entirely to work. Besides, it was one of his 
theories that absolute rest was unprofitable, that it 
should never be prescribed, even to the overworked. 
As the fish lives in the water, so a man lives only in 
the external medium which surrounds him, the sen- 
sations which he receives from it, transforming them- 
selves in him into impulses, thoughts, and acts; so 
that if there were absolute rest, if he continued to 
receive sensations without giving them out again, 
digested and transformed, an engorgement would 
result, a malaise, an inevitable loss of equilibrium. 
For himself he had always found work to be the 
best regulator of his existence. Even on the morn- 
ings when he felt ill, if he set to work he recovered 
his equipoise. He never felt better than when 


35 ° 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


he was engaged on some long work, methodically 
planned out beforehand, so many pages to so many 
hours every morning, and he compared this work to 
a balancing-pole, which enabled him to maintain his 
equilibrium in the midst of daily miseries, weak- 
nesses, and mistakes. So that he attributed entirely 
to the idleness in which he had been living for some 
weeks past, the palpitations which at times made 
him feel as if he were going to suffocate. If lie 
wished to recover his health he had only to take i:p 
again his great work. 

And Pascal spent hours developing and explain- 
ing these theories to Clotilde, with a feverish and 
exaggerated enthusiasm. He seemed to be once 
more possessed by the love of knowledge and study 
in which, up to the time of his sudden passion for 
her, he had spent his life exclusively. He repeated 
to her that he could not leave his work unfinished, 
that he had still a great deal to do, if he desired to 
leave a lasting monument behind him. His anxiety 
about the envelopes seemed to have taken posses- 
sion of him again ; he opened the large press twenty 
times a day, taking them down from the upper 
shelf, and enriching them by new notes. His ideas 
on heredity were already undergoing a transforma- 
tion ; he would have liked to review the whole, to 
recast the whole, to deduce from the family history, 
natural and social, a vast synthesis, a rtsumt, in 
broad strokes, of all humanity. Then, besides, he 
reviewed his method of treatment by hypodermic 
injections, with the purpose of amplifying it — a con- 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


351 


fused vision of a new therapeutics; a vague and 
remote theory based on his convictions and his 
personal experience of the beneficent dynamic 
influence of work. 

Now every morning, when he seated himself at 
his table, he would lament : 

“I shall not live long enough; life is too short.” 

He seemed to feel that he must not lose another 
hour. And one morning he looked up abruptly 
and said to his companion, who was copying a 
manuscript at his side: 

“Listen well, Clotilde. If I should die ” 

“What an idea!” she protested, terrified. 

“If I should die,” he resumed, “listen to me well 
— close all the doors immediately. You are to keep 
the envelopes, you, you only. And when you have 
collected all my other manuscripts, send them to 
Ramond. These are my last wishes, do you hear?” 

But she refused to listen to him. 

“No, no!” she cried hastily, “you talk nonsense!” 

“Clotilde, swear to me that you will keep the 
envelopes, and that you will send all my other 
papers to Ramond.” 

At last, now very serious, and her eyes filled with 
tears, she gave him the promise he desired. He 
caught her in his arms, he, too, deeply moved, and 
lavished caresses upon her, as if his heart had all at 
once reopened to her. Presently he recovered his 
calmness, and spoke of his fears. Since he had been 
trying to work they seemed to have returned. He 
kept constant watch upon the press, pretending to 


35 2 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


have observed Martine prowling about it. Might 
they not work upon the fanaticism of this girl, 
and urge her to a bad action, persuading her that 
she was securing her master’s eternal welfare? 
He had suffered so much from suspicion! In the 
dread of approaching solitude his former tortures 
returned — the tortures of the scientist, who is men- 
aced and persecuted by his own, at his own fireside, 
in his very flesh, in the work of his brain. 

One evening, when he was again discussing this 
subject with Clotilde, he said unthinkingly: 

‘‘You know that when you are no longer here ” 

She turned very pale and, as he stopped with a 
start, she cried : 

“Oh, master, master, you have not given up that 
dreadful idea, then? I can see in your eyes that 
you are hiding something from me, that you have a 
thought which you no longer share with me. But 
if I go away and you should die, who will be here 
then to protect your work?” 

Thinking that she had become reconciled to the 
idea of her departure, he had the strength to 
answer gayly : 

“Do you suppose that I would allow myself to die 
without seeing you once more I will write to you, 
of course. You must come back to close my eyes.” 

Now she burst out sobbing, and sank into a chair. 

“My God ! Can it be! You wish that to-morrow 
we should be together no longer, we who have never 
been separated !” 

From this day forth Pascal seemed more engrossed 


DOCTOR PASCAL . 


353 


than ever in his work. He would sit for four or five 
hours at a time, whole mornings and afternoons, 
without once raising his head. He overacted his 
zeal. He would allow no one to disturb him, by so 
much as a word. And when Clotilde would leave 
the room on tiptoe to give an order downstairs or 
to go on some errand, he would assure himself by a 
furtive glance that she was gone, and then let his 
head drop on the table, with an air of profound 
dejection. It was a painful relief from the extraor- 
dinary effort which he compelled himself to make 
when she was present ; to remain at his table, instead 
of going over and taking her in his arms and cov- 
ering her face with sweet kisses. Ah, work! how 
ardently he called on it as his only refuge from 
torturing thoughts. But for the most part he was 
unable to work; he was obliged to feign attention, 
keeping his eyes fixed upon the page, his sorrowful 
eyes that grew dim with tears, while his mind, con- 
fused, distracted, filled always with one image, 
suffered the pangs of death. Was he then doomed 
to see work fail now in its effect, he who had always 
considered it of sovereign power, the creator and 
ruler of the world ? Must he then throw away his 
pen, renounce action, and do nothing in future but 
exist? And tears would flow down his white beard; 
and if he heard Clotilde coming upstairs again he 
would seize his pen quickly, in order that she might 
find him as she had left him, buried seemingly in 
profound meditation, when his mind was now only 
an aching void. 


354 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


It was now the middle of September; two weeks 
that had seemed interminable had passed in this dis- 
tressing condition of things, without bringing any 
solution, when one morning Clotilde was greatly sur- 
prised by seeing her grandmother, Felicite, enter. 
Pascal had met his mother the day before in the 
Rue de la Banne, and, impatient to consummate the 
sacrifice, and not finding in himself the strength to 
make the rupture, he had confided in her, in spite of 
his repugnance, and begged her to come on the fol- 
lowing day. As it happened, she had just received 
another letter from Maxime, a despairing and im- 
ploring letter. 

She began by explaining her presence. 

“Yes, it is I, my dear, and you can understand 
that only very weighty reasons could have induced 
me to set my foot here again. But, indeed, you are 
getting crazy; I cannot allow you to ruin your life 
in this way, without making a last effort to open 
your eyes.” 

She then read Maxime’s letter in a tearful voice. 
He was nailed to an armchair. It seemed he was 
suffering from a form of ataxia, rapid in its progress 
and very painful. Therefore he requested a decided 
answer from his sister, hoping still that she would 
come, and trembling at the thought of being com- 
pelled to seek another nurse. This was what he 
would be obliged to do, however, if they abandoned 
him in his sad condition. And when she had fin- 
ished reading the letter she hinted that it would be 
d great pity to let Maxime’s fortune pass into the 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


355 


hands of strangers; but, above all, she spoke of 
duty; of the assistance one owed to a relation, she, 
too, affecting to believe that a formal promise had 
been given. 

“Come, my dear, call upon your memory. You 
told him that if he should ever need you, you 
would go to him ; I can hear you saying it now. 
Was it not so, my son?” 

Pascal, his face pale, his head slightly bent, had 
kept silence since his mother’s entrance, leaving 
her to act. He answered only by an affirmative nod. 

Then Felicity went overall the arguments that he 
himself had emplo/ed to persuade Clotilde — the 
dreadful scandal, to which insult was now added ; 
impending want, so hard for them both ; the impos- 
sibility of continuing the life they were leading. 
What future could they hope for, now that they 
had been overtaken by poverty? It was stupid and 
cruel to persist longer in her obstinate refusal. 

Clotilde, standing erect and with an impenetrable 
countenance, remained silent, refusing even to dis- 
cuss the question. But, as her grandmother tor- 
mented her to give an answer, she said at last : 

“Once more, I have no duty whatever toward my 
brother; my duty is here. He can dispose of his 
fortune as he chooses; I want none of it. When 
we are too poor, master shall send away Martine 
and keep me as his servant.” 

Old Mme. Rougon wagged her chin. 

“Before being his servant it would be better if 
you had begun by being his wife. Why have you 


35 6 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


not got married? It would have been simpler and 
more proper.” 

And Felicite reminded her how she had come one 
day to urge this marriage, in order to put an end to 
gossip, and how the young girl had seemed greatly 
surprised, saying that neither she nor the doctor 
had thought of it, but that, notwithstanding, they 
would get married later on, if necessary, for there 
was no hurry. 

“Get married ; I am quite willing !” cried Clotilde. 
“You are right, grandmother.” 

And turning to Pascal: 

“You have told me a hundred times that you 
would do whatever I wished. Marry me; do you 
hear? I will be your wife, and I will stay here. A 
wife does not leave her husband.” 

But he answered only by a gesture, as if he 
feared that his voice would betray him, and that he 
should accept, in a cry of gratitude, the eternal 
bond which she had proposed to him. His gesture 
might signify a hesitation, a refusal. What was the 
good of this marriage in extremis , when everything 
was falling to pieces? 

“Those are very fine sentiments, no doubt,” 
returned Felicite. “You have settled it all in your 
own little head. But marriage will not give you an 
income; and, meantime, you are a great expense to 
him ; you are the heaviest of his burdens.” 

The effect which these words had upon Clotilde 
was extraordinary. She turned violently to Pascal, 
her cheeks crimson, her eyes filled with tears. 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


357 


“Master, master! is what grandmother has just 
said true? Has it come to this, that you regret the 
money I cost you here?” 

Pascal grew still paler; he remained motionless, 
in an attitude of utter dejection. But in a far-away 
voice, as if he were talking to himself, he murmured : 

“I have so much work to do ! I should like to go 
over my envelopes, my manuscripts, my notes, and 
complete the work of my life. If I were alone 
perhaps I might be able to arrange everything. I 
would sell La Souleiade, oh ! for a crust of bread, for 
it is not worth much. I should shut myself and my 
papers in a little room. I should work from morn- 
ing till night, and I should try not to be too 
unhappy.” 

But he avoided her glance; and, agitated as she 
was, these painful and stammering utterances were 
not calculated to satisfy her. She grew every 
moment more and more terrified, for she felt that 
the irrevocable word was about to be spoken. 

“Look at me, master, look me in the face. And 
I conjure you, be brave, choose between your work 
and me, since you say, it seems, that you send me 
away that you may work the better.” 

The moment for the heroic falsehood had come. 
He lifted his head and looked her bravely in the 
face, and with the smile of a dying man who desires 
death, recovering his voice of divine goodness, he 
said : 

“How excited you get! Can you not do your 
duty quietly, like everybody else? I have a great 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


35 ^ 

deal of work to do, and I need to be alone ; and 
you, dear, you ought to go to your brother. Go 
then, everything is ended.” 

There was a terrible silence for the space of a few 
seconds. She looked at him earnestly, hoping that 
he would change his mind. Was he really speaking 
the truth? was he not sacrificing himself in order 
that she might be happy? For a moment she had 
an intuition that this was the case, as if some subtle 
breath, emanating from him, had warned her of it. 

“And you are sending me away forever? You 
will not permit me to come back to-morrow?” 

But he held out bravely ; with another smile he 
seemed to answer that when one went away like 
this it was not to come back again on the following 
day. She was now completely bewildered ; she 
knew not what to think. It might be possible that 
he had chosen work sincerely ; that the man of 
science had gained the victory over the lover. She 
grew still paler, and she waited a little longer, in the 
terrible silence; then, slowly, with her air of tender 
and absolute submission, she said : 

“Very well, master, I will go away whenever you 
wish, and I will not return until you send for me.” 

The die was cast. The irrevocable was accom- 
plished. Each felt that neither would attempt to 
recall the decision that had been made ; and, from 
this instant, every minute that passed would bring 
nearer the separation. 

F£licite, surprised at not being obliged to say 
more, at once desired to fix the time for Clotilde’s 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


359 


departure. She applauded herself for her tenacity; 
she thought she had gained the victory by main 
force. It was now Friday, and it was settled that 
Clotilde should leave on the following Sunday. A 
dispatch was even sent to Maxime. 

For the past three days the mistral had been 
blowing. But on this evening its fury was re- 
doubled, and Martine declared, in accordance with 
the popular belief, that it would last for three days 
longer. The winds at the end of September, in the 
valley of the Viorne, are terrible. So that the serv- 
ant took care to go into every room in the house to 
assure herself that the shutters were securely fas- 
tened. When the mistral blew it caught La Sou- 
leiade slantingly, above the roofs of the houses of 
Plassans, on the little plateau on which the house 
was built. And now it raged and beat against the 
house, shaking it from garret to cellar, day and 
night, without a moment’s cessation. The tiles 
were blown off, the fastenings of the windows were 
torn away, while the wind, entering the crevices, 
moaned and sobbed wildly through the house; and 
the doors, if they were left open for a moment, 
through forgetfulness, slammed to with a noise like 
the report of a cannon. They might have fancied 
they were sustaining a siege, so great were the 
noise and the discomfort. 

It was in this rhelancholy house shaken by the 
storm that Pascal, on the following day, helped 
Clotilde to make her preparations for her departure. 
Old Mme. Rougon was not to return until Sunday, 


3 6 ° 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


to say good-by. When Martine was informed of 
the approaching separation, she stood still in dumb 
amazement, and a flash, quickly extinguished, lighted 
her eyes; and as they sent her out of the room, 
saying that they would not require her assistance in 
packing the trunks, she returned to the kitchen and 
busied herself in her usual occupations, seeming to 
ignore the catastrophe which was about to revolu- 
tionize their household of three. But at Pascal’s 
slightest call she would run so promptly and with 
such alacrity, her face so bright and so cheerful, in 
her zeal to serve him, that she seemed like a young 
girl. Pascal did not leave Clotilde for a moment, 
helping her, desiring to assure himself that she was 
taking with her everything she could need. Two 
large trunks stood open in the middle of the disor- 
dered room; bundles and articles of clothing lay 
about everywhere; twenty times the drawers and 
the presses had been visited. And in this work, 
this anxiety to forgot nothing, the painful sinking of 
the heart which they both felt was in some measure 
lessened. They forget for an instant — he watching 
carefully to see that no space was lost, utilizing the 
hat case for the smaller articles of clothing, slipping 
boxes in between the folds of the linen ; while she, 
taking down the gowns, folded them on the bed, 
waiting to put them last in the top tray. Then, 
when a little tired they stood up and found them- 
selves again face to face, they would smile at each 
other at first; then choke back the sudden tears 
that started at the recollection of the impending 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


361 


and inevitable misfortune. But though their hearts 
bled they remained firm. Good God ! was it then 
true that they were to be no longer together? And 
then they heard the wind, the terrrible wind, which 
threatened to blow down the house. 

How many times during this last day did they 
not go over to the window, attracted by the storm, 
wishing that it would sweep away the world. Dur- 
ing these squalls the sun did not cease to shine, the 
sky remained constantly blue, but a livid blue, wind- 
swept and dusty, and the sun was a yellow sun, pale 
and cold. They saw in the distance the vast white 
clouds rising from the roads, the trees bending before 
the blast, lookirg as if they were flying all in the 
same direction, at the same rate of speed ; the whole 
country parched and exhausted by the unvarying 
violence of the wind that blew ceaselessly, with a 
roar like thunder. Branches were snapped and 
whirled out of sight; roofs were lifted up and car- 
ried so far away that they were never afterward 
found. Why could not the mistral take them all 
up together and carry them off to some unknown 
land, where they might be happy? The trunks 
were almost packed when Pascal went to open one 
of the shutters that the wind had blown to, but so 
fierce a gust swept in through the half open window 
that Clotilde had to go to his assistance. Leaning 
with all their weight, they were able at last to turn 
the catch. The articles of clothing in the room 
were blown about, and they gathered up in frag- 
ments a little hand mirror which had fallen from a 


362 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


chair. Was this a sign of approaching death, as the 
women of the faubourg said? 

In the evening, after a mournful dinner in the 
bright dining room, with its great bouquets of flow- 
ers, Pascal said he would retire early. Clotilde was 
to leave on the following morning by the ten 
o’clock train, and he feared for her the long journey 
— twenty hours of railway traveling. But when he 
had retired he was unable to sleep. At first he 
thought it was the wind that kept him awake. The 
sleeping house was full of cries, voices of entreaty 
and voices of anger, mingled together, accompanied 
by endless sobbing. Twice he got up and went to 
listen at Clolilde’s door, but he heard nothing. He 
went downstairs to close a door that banged per- 
sistently, like misfortune knocking at the walls. 
Gusts blew through the dark rooms, and he went 
to bed again, shivering and haunted by lugubrious 
visions. 

At six o’clock Martine, fancying she heard her 
master knocking for her on the floor of his room, 
went upstairs. She entered the room with the alert 
and excited expression which she had worn for the 
past two days; but she stood still, astonished and 
uneasy, when she saw him lying, half-dressed, across 
his bed, haggard, biting the pillow to stifle his sobs. 
He got out of bed and tried to finish dressing him- 
self, but a fresh attack seized him, and, his head 
giddy and his heart palpitating to suffocation, recov- 
ering from a momentary faintness, he faltered in 
agonized tones: 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 363 

“No, no, I cannot; I suffer too much. I would 
rather die, die now ” 

He recognized Martine, and abandoning himself 
to his grief, his strength totally gone, he made his 
confession to her: 

“My poor girl, I suffer too much, my heart is 
breaking. She is taking away my heart with her, 
she is taking away my whole being. I cannot live 
without her. I almost died last night. I would be 
glad to die before her departure, not to have the 
anguish of seeing her go away. Oh, my God ! she 
is going away, and I shall have her no longer, and I 
shall be left alone, alone, alone ! ” 

The servant, who had gone upstairs so gayly, 
turned as pale as wax, and a hard and bitter look 
came into her face. For a moment she watched 
him clutching the bedclothes convulsively, uttering 
hoarse cries of despair, his face pressed against the 
coverlet. Then, by a violent effort, she seemed to 
make up her mind. 

“But, monsieur, there is no sense in making 
trouble for yourself in this way. It is ridiculous. 
Since that is how it is, and you cannot do without 
mademoiselle, I shall go and tell her what a state 
you have let yourself get into.” 

At these words he got up hastily, staggering still, 
and, leaning for support on the back of a chair, he 
cried : 

“I positively forbid you to do so, Martine!” 

“A likely thing that I should listen to you, seeing 
you like that! To find you some other time half 


3 6 4 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


dead, crying your eyes out! No, no! I shall go to 
mademoiselle and tell her the truth, and compel her 
to remain with us.” 

But he caught her angrily by the arm and held 
her fast. 

"I command you to keep quiet, do you hear? 
Or you shall go with her. Why did you come in? 
It was this wind that made me ill. That concerns 
no one.” 

Then, yielding to a good-natured impulse, with 
his usual kindness of heart, he smiled. 

“My poor girl, see how you vex me! Let me act 
as I ought, for the happiness of others. And not 
another word ; you would pain me greatly.” 

Martine’s eyes, too, filled with tears. It was just 
in time that they made peace, for Clotilde entered 
almost immediately. She had risen early, eager to 
see Pascal, hoping doubtless, up to the last moment, 
that he would keep her. Her own eyelids were 
heavy from want of sleep, and she looked at him 
steadily as she entered, with her inquiring air. But 
he was still so discomposed that she began to grow 
uneasy. 

“No, indeed, I assure you, I would even have 
slept well but for the mistral. I was just telling 
you so, Martine, was I not?” 

The servant confirmed his words by an affirmative 
nod. And Clotilde, too, submitted, saying nothing 
of the night of anguish and mental conflict she had 
spent while he, on his side, had been suffering the 
pangs of death. Both of the women now docilely 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 365 

obeyed and aided him, in his heroic self-abnega- 
tion. 

“Wait,” he continued, opening his desk, “I have 
something here for you. There! there are seven 
hundred francs in that envelope.” 

And in spite of her exclamations and protesta- 
tions he persisted in rendering her an account. Of 
the six thousand francs obtained by the sale of the 
jewels two hundred only had been spent, and he 
had kept one hundred to last till the end of the 
month, with the strict economy, the penuriousness, 
which he now displayed. Afterward he would no 
doubt sell La Souleiade, he would work, he would 
be able to extricate himself from his difficulties. 
But he would not touch the five thousand francs 
which remained, for they were her property, her 
own, and she would find them again in the drawer. 

“Master, master, you are giving me a great deal 
of pain ” 

“I wish it,” he interrupted, “and it is you who 
are trying to break my heart. Come, it is half-past 
seven, I will go and cord your trunks since they are 
locked.” 

When Martine and Clotilde were alone and face 
to face they looked at each other for a moment in 
silence. Ever since the commencement of the new 
situation, they had been fully conscious of their 
secret antagonism, the open triumph of the young 
mistress, the half concealed jealousy of the old serv- 
ant about her adored master. Now it seemed that 
the victory remained with the servant. But in this 


366 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


final moment their common emotion drew them 
together. 

“Martine, you must not let him eat like a poor \ 
man. You promise me that he shall have wine and 1 
meat every day?” 

“Have no fear, mademoiselle.” 

“And the five thousand francs lying there, you j; 
know, belong to him. You are not going to let 
yourselves starve to death, I suppose, with those 
there. I want you to treat him very well.” 

‘‘I tell you that I will make it my business to do 
so, mademoiselle, and that monsieur shall want for j 
nothing.” 

There was a moment’s silence. They were still 
regarding each other. 

“And watch him, to see that he does not over- 
work himself. I am going away very uneasy; he 
has not been well for some time past. Take good 
care of him.” 

“Make your mind easy, mademoiselle, I will take 
care of him.” 

“Well, I give him into your charge. He will have 
only you now ; and it is some consolation to me to 
know that you love him dearly. Love him with all 
your strength. Love him for us both.” 

“Yes, mademoiselle, as much as I can.” 

Tears came into their eyes; Clotilde spoke again. 

“Will you embrace me, Martine?” 

“Oh, mademoiselle, very gladly.” 

They were in each other’s arms when Pascal 
re-entered the room. He pretended not to see 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


367 


them, doubtless afraid of giving way to his emo- 
tion. In an unnaturally loud voice he spoke of the 
final preparations for Clotilde’s departure, like a 
man who had a great deal on his hands and was 
afraid that the train might be missed. He had 
corded the trunks, a man had taken them away in a 
little wagon, and they would find them at the sta- 
tion. But it was only eight o'clock, and they had 
still two long hours before them. Two hours of 
mortal anguish, spent in unoccupied and weary 
waiting, during which they tasted a hundred times 
over the bitterness of parting. The breakfast took 
hardly a quarter [of an hour. Then they got up, to 
sit down again. Their eyes never left the clock. 
The minutes seemed long as those of a death 
watch, throughout the mournful house. 

“How the wind blows!” said Clotilde, as a sud- 
den gust made all the doors creak. 

Pascal went over to the window and watched the 
wild flight of the storm-blown trees. 

“It has increased, since morning,” he said. 
“Presently I must see to the roof, for some of the 
tiles have been blown away.” 

Already they had ceased to be one household. 
They listened in silence to the furious wind, sweep- 
ing everything before it, carrying with it their life. 

Finally Pascal looked for a last time at the clock, 
and said simply: 

“It is time, Clotilde.” 

She rose from the chair on which she had been 
sitting. She had for an instant forgotten that she 


3 68 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


was going away, and all at once the dreadful reality 
came back to her. Once more she looked at him, 
but he did not open his arms to keep her. It was 
over; her hope was dead. And from this moment 
her face was like that of one struck with death. 

At first they exchanged the usual commonplaces. 

“You will write to me, will you not?” 

'‘Certainly, and you must let me hear from you 
as often as possible.” 

“Above all, if you should fall ill, send for me at 
once.” 

“I promise you that I will do so. But there is no 
danger. I am very strong.” 

Then, when the moment came in which she was 
to leave this dear house, Clotilde looked around 
with unsteady gaze; then she threw herself on Pas- 
cal’s breast, she held him for an instant in her arms, 
faltering : 

“I wish to embrace you here, I wish to thank you. 
Master, it is you who have made me what I am. As 
you have often told me, you have corrected my 
heredity. What should I have become amid the 
surroundings in which Maxime has grown up? Yes, 
if I am worth anything, it is to you alone I owe it, 
you, who transplanted me into this abode of kind- 
ness and affection, where you have brought me up 
worthy of you. Now, after having taken me and 
overwhelmed me with benefits, you send me away. 
Be it as you will, you are my master, and I will obey 
you. I love you, in spite of all, and I shall always 
love you,” 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


369 


He pressed her to his heart, answering: 

“I desire only your good, I am completing my 
work.” 

When they reached the station, Clotilde vowed 
to herself that she would one day come back. Old 
Mme. Rougon was there, very gay and very brisk, 
in spite of her eighty-and-odd years. She was 
triumphant now; she thought she would have her 
son Pascal at her mercy. When she saw them both 
stupefied with grief she took charge of everything; 
got the ticket, registered the baggage, and installed 
the traveler in a compartment in which there were 
only ladies. Then she spoke for a long time about 
Maxime, giving instructions and asking to be kept 
informed of everything. But the train did not start ; 
there were still five cruel minutes during which they 
remained face to face, without speaking to each 
other. Then came the end, there were embraces, a 
great noise of wheels, and a waving of handkerchiefs. 

Suddenly Pascal became aware that he was stand- 
ing alone upon the platform, while the train was 
disappearing around a bend of the road. Then, 
without listening to his mother, he ran furiously up 
the slope, sprang up the stone steps like a young 
man, and found himself in three minutes on the 
terrace of La Souleiade. The mistral was raging 
there — a fierce squall which bent the secular 
cypresses like straws. In the colorless sky the sun 
seemed weary of the violence of the wind, which for 
six days had been sweeping over its face. And 
like the wind-blown trees Pascal stood firm, his 


37o 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


garments flapping like banners, his beard and hair 
blown about and lashed by the storm. His breath 
caught by the wind, his hands pressed upon his 
heart to quiet its throbbing, he saw the train flying 
in the distance across the bare plain, a little train 
which the mistral seemed to sweep before it like a 
dry branch. 


XII. 


From the day following Clotilde’s departure, 
Pascal shut himself up in the great empty house. 
He did not leave it again, ceasing entirely the rare 
professional visits which he had still continued to 
make, living there with doors and windows closed, 
in absolute silence and solitude. Martine 'had 
received formal orders to admit no one under any 
pretext whatever. 

“But your mother, monsieur, Mme. Felicity?” 

“My mother less than anyone else; I have my 
reasons. Tell her that I am working, that I require 
to concentrate my thoughts, and that I request her 
to excuse me.” 

Three times in succession old Mme. Rougon had 
presented herself. She would storm at the hall 
door. He would hear her voice rising in anger as 
she tried in vain to force her way in. Then the 
noise would be stilled, and there would be only a 
whisper of complaint and plotting between her and 
the servant. But not once did he yield, not once 
did he lean over the banisters and call to her to 
come up. 

One day Martine ventured to say to him: 

“It is very hard, all the same, monsieur, to refuse 
admittance to one’s mother. The more so, as 


371 


372 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


Mme. F6lirit£ comes with good intentions, for she 
knows the straits that monsieur is in, and she insists 
only in order to offer her services.” 

“Money!” he cried, exasperated. “I want no 
money, do you hear? And from her less than any- 
body. I will work, I will earn my own living ; why 
should I not?” 

The question of money, however, began to grow 
pressing. He obstinately refused to take another 
sou from the five thousand francs locked up in the 
desk. Now that he was alone, he was completely 
indifferent to material things; he would have been 
satisfied to live on bread and water; and every time 
the servant asked him for money to buy wine, meat, 
or sweets, he shrugged his shoulders — what was the 
use? there remained a crust from the day before, 
was not that sufficient? But in her affection for her 
master, whom she felt to be suffering, the old serv- 
ant was heart-broken at this miserliness which 
exceeded her own ; this utter destitution to which 
he abandoned himself and the whole house. The 
workmen of the faubourgs lived better. Thus it 
was that for a whole day a terrible conflict went on 
within her. Her doglike love struggled with her 
love for her money, amassed sou by sou, hidden 
away, “making more,” as she said. She would 
rather have parted with a piece of her flesh. So 
long as her master had not suffered alone the idea 
of touching her treasure had not even occurred to 
her. And she displayed extraordinary heroism the 
morning when, driven to extremity, seeing her stove 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


373 


cold and the larder empty, she disappeared for an 
hour and then returned with provisions and the 
change of a hundred-franc note. 

Pascal, who just then chanced to come downstairs, 
asked her in astonishment where the money had 
come from, furious already, and prepared to throw 
it all into the street, imagining she had applied to 
his mother. 

“Why, no; why, no, monsieur!” she stammered, 
"it is not that at all.” 

And she told him the story that she had prepared. 

“Imagine, M. Grandguillot’s affairs are going to 
be settled — or at least I think so. It occurred to 
me this morning to go to the assignee’s to inquire, 
and he told me that you would undoubtedly recover 
something, and that I might have a hundred francs 
now. Yes, he was even satisfied with a receipt from 
me. He knows me, and you can make it all right 
afterward.” 

Pascal seemed scarcely surprised. She had calcu- 
lated correctly that he would not go out to verify 
her account. She was relieved, however, to see with 
what easy indifference he accepted her story. 

“Ah, so much the better!” he said. “You see 
now that one must never despair. That will give 
me time to settle my affairs.” 

His “affairs” was the sale of La Souleiade, about 
which he had been thinking vaguely. But what a 
grief to leave this house in which Clotilde had 
grown up, where they had lived together for nearly 
eighteen years! He had taken two or three weeks 


374 


DOCTOR PA SC At. 


already to reflect over the matter. Now that he 
had the hope of getting back a little of the money 
he had lost through the notary’s failure, he ceased 
to think any more about it. He relapsed into his 
former indifference, eating whatever Martine served 
him, not even noticing the comforts with which she 
once more surrounded him, in humble adoration, 
heart-broken at giving her money, but very happy 
to support him now, without his suspecting that his 
sustenance came from her. 

But Pascal rewarded her very ill. Afterward he 
would be sorry, and regret his outbursts. But in 
the state of feverish desperation in which he lived 
this did not prevent him from again flying into a 
passion with her, at the slightest cause of dissatis- 
faction. One evening, after he had been listening 
to his mother talking for an interminable time with 
her in the kitchen, he cried in sudden fury : 

“Martine, I do not wish her to enter La Souleiade 
again, do you hear? If you ever let her into the 
house again I will turn you out !” 

She listened to him in surprise. Never, during 
the thirty-two years in which she had been in his 
service, had he threatened to dismiss her in this 
way. Big tears came to her eyes. 

“Oh, monsieur! you would not have the courage 
to do it! And I would not go. I would lie down 
across the threshold first.” 

He already regretted his anger, and he said more 
gently : 

“The thing is that I know perfectly well what is 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


375 


going on. She comes to indoctrinate you, to put 
you against me, is it not so? Yes, she is watching 
my papers ; she wishes to steal and destroy every- 
thing up there in the press. I know her; when she 
wants anything, she never gives up until she gets it. 
Well, you can tell her that I am on my guard ; that 
while I am alive she shall never even come near the 
press. And the key is here in my pocket.” 

In effect, all his former terror — the terror of the 
scientist who feels himself surrounded by secret 
enemies, had returned. Ever since he had been 
living alone in the deserted house he had had a 
feeling of returning danger, of being constantly 
watched in secret. The circle had narrowed, and if 
he showed such anger at these attempts at invasion, 
if he repulsed his mother’s assaults, it was because 
he did not deceive himself as to her real plans, and 
he was afraid that he might yield. If she were 
there she would gradually take possession of him, 
until she had subjugated him completely. There- 
fore his former tortures returned, and he passed the 
days watching; he shut up the house himself in the 
evening, and he would often rise during the night, 
to assure himself that the locks were not being 
forced. What he feared was that the servant, won 
over by his mother, and believing she was securing 
his eternal welfare-, would open the door to Mme. 
F6licit£. In fancy he saw the papers blazing in the 
fireplace; he kept constant guard over them, seized 
again by a morbid love, a torturing affection for 
this icy heap of papers, these cold pages of manu- 


376 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


script, to which he had sacrificed the love of woman, 
and which he tried to love sufficiently to be able to 
forget everything else for them. 

Pascal, now that Clotilde was no longer there, 
threw himself eagerly into work, trying to submerge 
himself in it, to lose himself in it. If he secluded 
himself, if he did not set foot even in the garden, if 
he had had the strength, one day when Martine 
came up to announce Dr. Ramond, to answer that 
he would not receive him, he had, in this bitter desire 
for solitude, no other aim than to kill thought by 
incessant labor. That poor Ramond, how gladly he 
would have embraced him ! for he divined clearly 
the delicacy of feeling that had made him hasten to 
console his old master. But why lose an hour? 
Why risk emotions and tears which would leave him 
so weak? From daylight he was at his table, he 
spent at it his mornings and his afternoons, ex- 
tended often into the evening after the lamp was 
lighted, and far into the night. He wished to put 
his old project into execution — to revise his whole 
theory of heredity, employing the documents fur- 
nished by his own family to establish the laws 
according to which, in a certain group of human 
beings, life is distributed and conducted with math- 
ematical precision from one to another, taking 
into account the environment — a vast bible, the 
genesis of families, of societies, of all humanity. 
He hoped that the vastness of such a plan, the 
effort necessary to develop so colossal an idea, 
would take complete possession of him, restoring to 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


377 


him his health, his faith, his pride in the supreme 
joy of the accomplished work. But it was in vain 
that he threw himself passionately, persistently, 
without reserve, into his work; he succeeded only in 
fatiguing his body and his mind, without even being 
able to fix his thoughts or to put his heart into his 
work, every day sicker and more despairing. Had 
work, then, finally lost its power? He whose life 
had been spent in work, who had regarded it as the 
sole motor, the benefactor, and the consoler, must 
he then conclude that to love and to be loved is 
beyond all else in the world? Occasionally he 
would have great thoughts, he continued to sketch 
out his new theory of the equilibrium of forces, • 
demonstrating that what man receives in sensation 
he should return in action. How natural, full, and 
happy would life be if it could be lived entire, per- 
forming its functions like a well-ordered machine, 
giving back in power what was consumed in fuel, 
maintaining itself in vigor and in beauty by the 
simultaneous and logical play of all its organs. He 
believed physical and intellectual labor, feeling and 
reasoning should be in equal proportions, and never 
excessive, for excess meant disturbance of the equi- 
librium and, consequently, disease. Yes, yes, to 
begin life over again and to know how to live it, to 
dig the earth, to study man, to love woman, to 
attain to human perfection, the future city of uni- 
versal happiness, through the harmonious working 
of the entire being, what a beautiful legacy for a 
philosophical physician to leave behind him would 


378 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


this be ! And this dream of the future, this theory, 
confusedly perceived, filled him with bitterness at 
the thought that now his life was a force wasted 
and lost. 

At the very bottom of his grief Pascal had the 
dominating feeling that for him life was ended. 
Regret for Clotilde, sorrow at having her no longer 
beside him, the certainty that he would never see 
her again, filled him with overwhelming grief. 
Work had lost its power, and he would sometimes 
let his head drop on the page he was writing, and 
weep for hours together, unable to summon courage 
to take up the pen again. His passion for work, his 
days of voluntary fatigue, led to terrible nights, 
nights of feverish sleeplessness, in which he would 
stuff the bedclothes into his mouth to keep from 
crying out Clotilde’s name. She was everywhere in 
this mournful house in which he secluded himself. 
He saw her again, walking through the rooms, sit- 
ting on the chairs, standing behind the doors. 
Downstairs, in the dining room, he could not sit 
at table, without seeing her opposite him. In the 
workroom upstairs she was still his constant com- 
panion, for she, too, had lived so long secluded in it 
that her image seemed reflected from everything ; 
he felt her constantly beside him, he could fancy he 
saw her standing before her desk, straight and 
slender — her delicate face bent over a pastel. And 
if he did not leave the house to escape from the 
dear and torturing memory it was because he had 
the certainty that he should find her everywhere in 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


379 


the garden, too: dreaming on the terrace; walking 
with slow steps through the alleys in the pine grove ; 
sitting under the shade of the plane trees; lulled by 
the eternal song of the fountain ; lying in the thresh- 
ing yard at twilight, her gaze fixed on space, waiting 
for the stars to come out. But above all, there 
existed for him a sacred sanctuary which he could 
not enter without trembling — the chamber where 
she had confessed her love. He kept the key of it ; 
he had not moved a single object from its place 
since the sorrowful morning of her departure; and 
a skirt which she had forgotten lay still upon her 
armchair. He opened his arms wildly to clasp her 
shade floating in the soft half light of the room, with 
its closed shutters and its walls hung with the old 
faded pink calico, of a dawnlike tint. 

In the midst of his unremitting toil Pascal had 
another melancholy pleasure — Clotilde’s letters. 
She wrote to him regularly twice a week, long let- 
ters of eight or ten pages, in which she described to 
him all her daily life. She did not seem to lead a 
very happy life in Paris. Maxime, who did not now 
leave his sick chair, evidently tortured her with the 
exactions of a spoiled child and an invalid. She 
spoke as if she lived in complete retirement, always 
waiting on him, so that she could not even go over to 
the window to look out on the avenue, along which 
rolled the fashionable stream of the promenaders of 
the Bois; and from certain of her expressions it 
could be divined that her brother, after having 
entreated her so urgently to go to him, suspected 


38 ° 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


her already, and had begun to regard her with hatred 
and distrust, as he did everyone who approached 
him, in his continual fear of being made use of and 
robbed. He did not give her the keys, treating her 
like a servant to whom he found it difficult to accus- 
tom himself. Twice she had seen her father, who 
was, as always, very gay, and overwhelmed with 
business; he had been converted to the Republic, 
and was at the height of political and financial suc- 
cess. Saccard had even taken her aside, to sym- 
pathize with her, saying that poor Maxime was 
really insupportable, and that she would be truly 
courageous if she consented to be made his victim. 
As she could not do everything, he had even had 
the kindness to send her, on the following day, 
the niece of his hairdresser, a fair-haired, innocent 
looking girl of eighteen, named Rose, who was assist- 
ing her now to take care of the invalid. But Clotilde 
made no complaint ; she affected, on the contrary, to 
be perfectly tranquil, contented, and resigned to 
everything. Her letters were full of courage, show- 
ing neither anger nor sorrow at the cruel separation, 
making no desperate appeal to Pascal’s affection to 
recall her. But between the lines, he could perceive 
that she trembled with rebellious anger, that her 
whole being yearned for him, that she was ready to 
commit the folly of returning to him immediately, 
at his lightest word. 

And this was the one word that Pascal would not 
write. Everything would be arranged in time. 
Maxime would become accustomed to his sister; 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


38r 


the sacrifice must be completed now that it had 
been begun. A single line written by him in a mo- 
ment of weakness, and all the advantage of the 
effort he had made would be lost, and their misery 
would begin again. Never had Pascal had greater 
need of courage than when he was answering 
Clotilde’s letters. At night, burning with fever, he 
would toss about, calling on her wildly ; then he 
would get up and write to her to come back at once. 
But when day came, and be had exhausted himself 
with weeping, his fever abated, and his answer was 
always very short, almost cold. He studied every 
sentence, beginning the letter over again when he 
thought he had forgotten himself. But what a 
torture, these dreadful letters, so short, so icy, in 
which he went against his heart, solely in order to 
wean her from him gradually, to take upon himself 
all the blame, and to make her believe that she could 
forget him, since he forgot her. They left him cov- 
ered with perspiration, and as exhausted as if he had 
just performed some great act of heroism. 

One morning toward the end of October, a month 
after Clotilde’s departure, Pascal had a sudden 
attack of suffocation. He had had, several times 
already, slight attacks, which he attributed to over- 
work. But this time the symptoms were so plain 
that he could not mistake them— a sharp pain in the 
region of the heart, extending over the whole chest 
and along the left arm, and a dreadful sensation of 
oppression and distress, while cold perspiration 
broke out upon him. It was an attack of angina 


382 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


pectoris. It lasted hardly more than a minute, and 
he was at first more surprised than frightened. 
With that blindness which physicians often show 
where their own health is concerned, he never sus- 
pected that his heart might be affected. 

As he was recovering his breath Martine came up 
to say that Dr. Ramond was downstairs, and again 
begged the doctor to see him. And Pascal, yield- 
ing perhaps to an unconscious desire to know the 
truth, cried : 

“Well, let him come up, since he insists upon it. 
I will be glad to see him.” 

The two men embraced each other, and no other 
allusion was made to the absent one, to her whose 
departure had left the house empty, than an ener- 
getic and sad hand clasp. 

“You don’t know why I have come?” cried 
Ramond immediately. “It is about a question of 
money. Yes, my father-in-law, M. Leveque, the 
advocate, whom you know, spoke to me yesterday 
again about the funds which you had with the 
notary Grandguillot. And he advises you strongly 
to take some action in the matter, for some persons 
have succeeded, he says, in recovering something.” 

“Yes, I know that that business is being settled,” 
said Pascal. “Martine has already got two hundred 
francs out of it, I believe.” 

“Martine?” said Ramond, looking greatly sur- 
prised, “how could she do that without your inter- 
vention? However, will you authorize my father- 
in-law to undertake your case? He will see the 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


3 8 3 


assignee, and sift the whole affair, since you have 
neither the time nor the inclination to attend to it.” 

“Certainly, I authorize M. Leveque to do so, and 
tell him that I thank him a thousand times.” 

Then this matter being settled, the young man, 
remarking the doctor’s pallor, and questioning him 
as to its cause, Pascal answered with a smile: 

“Imagine, my friend, I have just had an attack of 
angina pectoris. Oh, it is not imagination, all the 
symptoms were there. And stay! since you arc 
here you shall sound me.” 

At first Ramond refused, affecting to turn the 
consultation into a jest. Could a raw recruit like 
him venture to pronounce judgment on his general? 
But he examined him, notwithstanding, seeing that 
his face looked drawn and pained, with a singular 
• look of fright in the eyes. He ended by auscultat- 
ing him carefully, keeping his ear pressed closely to 
his chest for a considerable time. Several minutes 
passed in profound silence. 

“Well?” asked Pascal; when the young physician 
stood up. 

The latter did not answer at once. He felt the 
doctor’s eyes looking straight into his; and as the 
question had been put to him with quiet courage, he 
answered in the same way : 

“Well, it is true, I think there is some sclerosis.” 

“Ah ! it was kind of you not to attempt to deceive 
me,” returned the doctor, smiling. “I feared for an 
instant that you would tell me an untruth, and that 
would have hurt me.” 


3 8 4 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


Ramond, listening again, said in an undertone: 

“Yes, the beat is strong, the first sound is dull, 
while the second, on the contrary, is sharp. It is 
evident that the apex has descended and is turned 
toward the armpit. There is some sclerosis, at least 
it is very probable. One may live twenty years 
with that,” he ended, straightening himself. 

“No doubt, sometimes,” said Pascal. “At least, 
unless one chances to die of a sudden attack.” 

They talked for some time longer, discussed a 
remarkable case of sclerosis of the heart, which they 
had seen at the hospital at Plassans. And when the 
young physician went away, he said that he would 
return as soon as he should have news of the Grand- 
guillot liquidation. 

But when he was alone Pascal felt that he was 
lost. Everything was now explained: his palpita-- 
tions for some weeks past, his attacks of vertigo and 
suffocation; above all that weakness of the organ, 
of his poor heart, overtasked by feeling and by 
work, that sense of intense fatigue and impending 
death, regarding which he could no longer deceive 
himself. It was not as yet fear that he experienced, 
however. His first thought was that he, too, would 
have to pay for his heredity, that sclerosis was the 
species of degeneration which was to be his share of 
the physiological misery, the inevitable inheritance 
bequeathed him by his terrible ancestry. In others 
the neurosis, the original lesion, had turned to vice 
or virtue, genius, crime, drunkenness, sanctity; oth- 
ers again had died of consumption, of epilepsy, of 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


385 


ataxia; he had lived in his feelings and he would die 
of an affection of the heart. And he trembled no 
longer, he rebelled no longer against this manifest 
heredity, fated and inevitable, no doubt. On the 
contrary, a feeling of humility took possession of 
him ; the idea that all revolt against natural laws is 
bad, that wisdom does not consist in holding one's 
self apart, but in resigning one’s self to be only a 
member of the whole great body. Why, then, was 
he so unwilling to belong to his family that it filled 
him with triumph, that his heart beat with joy, 
when he believed himself different from them, with- 
out any community with them? Nothing could be 
less philosophical. Only monsters grew apart. 
And to belong to his family seemed to him in the 
end as good and as fine as to belong to any other 
family, for did not all families, in the main, resemble 
one another, was not humanity everywhere identical, 
with the same amount of good and of evil? He 
came at last, humbly and gently, even in the face of 
impending suffering and death, to accept everything 
life had to give him. 

From this time Pascal lived with the thought that 
he might die at any moment. And this helped to 
perfect his character, to elevate him to a complete 
forgetfulness of self. He did not cease to work, but 
he had never understood so well how much effort 
must seek its reward in itself, the work being always 
transitory, and remaining of necessity incomplete. 
One evening at dinner Martine informed him that 
Sarteur, the journeyman hatter, the former inmate 


3 86 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


of the asylum at the Tulettes, had just hanged him- 
self. All the evening he thought of this strange 
case, of this man whom he had believed he had 
cured of homicidal mania by his treatment of 
hypodermic injections, and who, seized by a fresh 
attack, had evidently had sufficient lucidity to hang 
himself, instead of springing at the throat of some 
passer-by. He again saw him, so gentle, so reason- 
able, kissing his hands, while he was advising him to 
return to his life of healthful labor. What then was 
this destructive and transforming force, the desire 
to murder, changing to suicide, death performing its 
task in spite of everything? With the death of this 
man his last vestige of pride as a healer disap- 
peared ; and each day when he returned to his work 
he felt as if he were only a learner, spelling out his 
task, constantly seeking the truth, which as con- 
stantly receded from him, assuming ever more 
formidable proportions. 

But in the midst of his resignation one thought still 
troubled him — what would become of Bonhomme, 
his old horse, if he himself should die before him? 
The poor brute, completely blind and his limbs 
paralyzed, did not now leave his litter. When his 
master went to see him, however, he turned his 
head, he could feel the two hearty kisses which were 
pressed on his nose. All the neighbors shrugged 
their shoulders and joked about this old relation 
whom the doctor would not allow to be slaugh- 
tered. Was he then to be the first to go, with the 
thought that the knacker would be called in on the 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


3%7 


following day. But one morning, when he entered 
the stable, Bonhomme did not hear him, did not 
raise his head. He was dead ; he lay there, with a 
peaceful expression, as if relieved that death had 
come to him so gently. His master knelt beside 
him and kissed him again and bade him farewell, 
while two big tears rolled down his cheeks. 

It was on this day that Pascal saw his neighbor, 
M. Bellombre, for the last time. Going over to the 
window he perceived him in his garden, in the pale 
sunshine of early November, taking his accustomed 
walk; and the sight of the old professor, living so 
completely happy in his solitude, filled him at first 
with astonishment. He could never have imagined 
such a thing possible, as that a man of sixty-nine 
should live thus, without wife or child, or even a 
dog, deriving his selfish happiness from the joy of 
living outside of life. Then he recalled his fits of 
anger against this man, his sarcasms about his fear 
of life, the catastrophes which he had wished might 
happen to him, the hope that punishment would 
come to him, in the shape of some housekeeper, or 
some female relation dropping down on him unex- 
pectedly. But no, he was still as fresh as ever, and 
Pascal was sure that for a long time to come he 
would continue to grow old like this, hard, avari- 
cious, useless, and happy. And yet he no longer 
execrated him; he could even have found it in his 
heart to pity him, so ridiculous and miserable did 
he think him for not being loved. Pascal, who suf- 
fered the pangs of death, because he was alone ! He 


3 88 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


whose heart was breaking because he was too full of 
others. Rather suffering, suffering only, than this 
selfishness, this death of all there is in us of living 
and human ! 

In the night which followed Pascal had another 
attack of angina pectoris. It lasted for five minutes, 
and he thought that he would suffocate without 
having the strength to call Martine. Then when he 
recovered his breath, he did not disturb himself, 
preferring to speak to no one of this aggravation 
of his malady ; but he had the certainty that it was 
all over with him, that he might not perhaps live a 
month longer. His first thought was Clotilde. 
Should he then never see her again? and so sharp a 
pang seized him that he believed another attack was 
coming on. Why should he not write to her to 
come to him? He had received a letter from her 
the day before; he would answer it this morning. 
Then the thought of the envelopes occurred to him. 
If he should die suddenly, his mother would be the 
mistress and she would destroy them ; and not on\y 
the envelopes, but his manuscripts, all his papers, 
thirty years of his intelligence and his labor. Thus 
the crime which he had so greatly dreaded would 
be consummated, the crime of which the fear alone, 
during his nights of fever, had made him get up out 
of bed trembling, his ear on the stretch, listening to 
hear if they were forcing open the press. The per- 
spiration broke out upon him, he saw himself dis- 
possessed, outraged, the ashes of his work thrown to 
the four winds. And when his thoughts reverted to 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


3*9 

Clotilde, he told himself that everything would be 
satisfactorily arranged, that he had only to call her 
back — she would be here, she would close his eyes, 
she would defend his memory. And he sat down to 
write at once to her, so that the letter might go by 
the morning mail. 

But when Pascal was seated before the white 
paper, with the pen between his fingers, a growing 
doubt, a feeling of dissatisfaction with himself, took 
possession of him. Was not this idea of his papers, 
this fine project of providing a guardian for them 
and saving them, a suggestion of his weakness, an 
excuse which he gave himself to bring back Clotilde, 
and see her again? Selfishness was at the bottom 
of it. He was thinking of himself, not of her. He 
saw her returning to this poor house, condemned to 
nurse a sick old man; and he saw her, above all, in 
her grief, in her awful agony, when he should terrify 
her some day by dropping down dead at her side. 
No, no! this was the dreadful moment which he 
must spare her, those days of cruel adieus and want 
afterward, a sad legacy which he could not leave her 
without thinking himself a criminal. Her tranquil- 
lity, her happiness only, were of any consequence, 
the rest did not matter. He would die in his hole, 
then, abandoned, happy to think her happy, to spare 
her the cruel blow of his death. As for saving his 
manuscripts he would perhaps find a means of 
doing so, he would try to have the strength to part 
from them and give them to Ramond. But even if 
all his papers were to perish, this was less of a sacn- 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


39 ° 

fice than to resign himself not to see her again, and 
he accepted it, and he was willing that nothing of 
him should survive, not even his thoughts, provided 
only that nothing of him should henceforth trouble 
her dear existence. 

Pascal accordingly proceeded to write one of his 
usual answers, which, by a great effort, he purposely 
made colorless and almost cold. Clotilde, in her last 
letter, without complaining of Maxime, had given it 
to be understood that her brother had lost his inter- 
est in her, preferring the society of Rose, the niece 
of Saccard’s hairdresser, the fair-haired young girl 
with the innocent look. And he suspected strongly 
some maneuver of the father: a cunning plan to 
obtain possession of the inheritance of the sick man, 
whose vices, so precocious formerly, gained new 
force as his last hour approached. But in spite of 
his uneasiness he gave Clotilde very good advice, 
telling her that she must make allowance for 
Maxime’s sufferings, that he had undoubtedly a 
great deal of affection and gratitude for her, in 
short, that it was her duty to devote herself to him 
to the end. When he signed the letter tears 
dimmed his sight. It was his death warrant — a 
death like that of an old and solitary brute, a death 
without a kiss, without the touch of a friendly hand 
— that he was signing. Never again would he 
embrace her. Then doubts assailed him ; was he 
doing right in leaving her amid such evil surround- 
ings, where he felt that she was in continual contact 
with every species of wickedness? 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


39 T 


The postman brought the letters and newspapers 
to La Souleiade every morning at about nine 
o’clock; and Pascal, when he wrote to ClotiJde, was 
accustomed to watch for him, to give him his letter, 
so as to be certain that his correspondence was not 
intercepted. But on this morning, when he went 
downstairs to give him the letter he had just writ- 
ten, he was surprised to receive one from him from 
Clotilde, although it was not the usual day for her 
letters. He allowed his own to go, however. Then 
he went upstairs, resumed his seat at his table, and 
tore open the envelope. 

The letter was short, but its contents filled Pascal 
with a great joy. 

But the sound of footsteps made him control him- 
self. He turned round and saw Martine, who was 
saying : 

“Dr. Ramond is downstairs.” 

“Ah ! let him come up, let him come up,” he said. 

It was another piece of good fortune that had 
come to him. Ramond cried gayly from the door: 

“Victory, master! I have brought you your 
money — not all, but a good sum.” 

And he told the story — an unexpected piece of 
good luck which his father-iri-law, M. Leveque, had 
brought to light The receipts for the hundred and 
twenty thousand francs, which constituted Pascal 
the personal creditor of Grandguillot, were valueless, 
since the latter was insolvent. Salvation was to 
come from the power of attorney which the doctor 


302 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


had sent him years before, at his request, that he 
might invest all or part of his money in mortgages. 
As the name of the proxy was in blank in the docu- 
ment, the notary, as is sometimes done, had made 
use of the name of one of his clerks, and eighty 
thousand francs, which had been invested in good 
mortgages, had thus been recovered through the 
agency of a worthy man who was not in the secrets 
of his employer. If Pascal had taken action in the 
matter, if he had gone to the public prosecutor’s 
office and the chamber of notaries, he would have 
disentangled the matter long before. However, he 
had recovered a sure income of four thousand francs. 

He seized the young man’s hands and pressed 
them, smiling, his eyes still moist with tears. 

“Ah! my friend, if you knew how happy I am! 
This letter of Clotilde’s has brought me a great hap- 
piness. Yes, I was going to send for her; but the 
thought of my poverty, of the privations she would 
have to endure here, spoiled for me the joy of her 
return. And now fortune has come back, at least 
enough to set up my little establishment again!’’ 

In the expansion of his feelings he held out the 
letter to Ramond, and forced him to read it. Then 
when the young man gave it back to him, smiling, 
comprehending the doctor’s emotion, and profoundly 
touched by it, yielding to an overpowering need of 
affection he caught him in his arms, like a comrade, 
a brother. The two men kissed each other vigor- 
ously on either cheek. 

'‘Come, since good fortune has sent you, I am 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


393 


going to ask another service from you. You know I 
distrust everyone around me, even my old house- 
keeper. Will you take my dispatch to the telegraph 
office?” 

He sat down again at the table, and wrote simply, 
“I await you; start to-night.” 

“Let me see,” he said, “to-day is the 6th of 
November, is it not? It is now near ten o’clock; 
she will have my dispatch at noon. That will give 
her time enough to pack her trunks and to take the 
eight o’clock express this evening, which will bring 
her to Marseilles in time for breakfast. But as there 
is no train which connects with it, she cannot be 
here until to-morrow, the 7th, at five o’clock.” 

After folding the dispatch he rose: 

“My God, at five o’clock to-morrow! How long to 
wait still! What shall I do with myself until then?” 

Then a sudden recollection filled him with anxiety, 
and he became grave. 

“Ramond, my comrade, will you give me a great 
proof of your friendship by being perfectly frank 
with me?” 

“How so, master?” 

“Ah, you understand me very well. The other 
day you examined me. Do you think I can live 
another year?” 

He fixed his eyes on the young man as he spoke, 
compelling him to look at him. Ramond evaded a 
direct answer, however, with a jest — was it really a 
physician who put such a question? 

“Let us be serious, Ramond, I beg of you.” 


394 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


Then Ramond answered in all sincerity that, in 
his opinion, the doctor might very justly entertain 
the hope of living another year. He gave his rea- 
sons — the comparatively slight progress which the 
sclerosis had made, and the absolute soundness of 
the other organs. Of course they must make allow- 
ance for what they did not and could not know, for a 
sudden accident was always possible. And the two 
men discussed the case as if they had been in con- 
sultation at the bedside of a patient, weighing the 
pros and cons, each stating his views and prognos- 
ticating a fatal termination, in accordance with the 
symptoms as defined by the best authorities. 

Pascal, as if it were someone else who was in 
question, had recovered all his composure and his 
heroic self-forgetfulness. 

“Yes,” he murmured at last, “you are right ; a 
year of life is still possible. Ah, my friend, how I 
wish I might live two years; a mad wish, no doubt, 
an eternity of joy. And yet, two years, that would 
not be impossible. I had a very curious case once, 
a wheelwright of the faubourg, who lived for four 
years, giving the lie to all my prognostications. 
Two years, two years, I will live two years ! I 
must live two years ! ” 

Ramond sat with bent head, without answering. 
He was beginning to be uneasy, fearing that he had 
shown himself too* optimistic ; and the doctor’s joy 
disquieted and grieved him, as if this very exalta- 
tion, this disturbance of a once strong brain, warned 
him of a secret and imminent danger. 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 395 

“Did you not wish to send that dispatch at onee?” 
he said. 

“Yes, yes, go quickly, my good Ramond, and 
come back again to see us the day after to-morrow. 
She will be here then, and I want you to come and 
embrace us.” 

The day was long, and the following morning, at 
about four o’clock, shortly after Pascal had fallen 
asleep, after a happy vigil filled with hopes and 
dreams, he was wakened by a dreadful attack. He 
felt as if an enormous weight, as if the whole house, 
had fallen down upon his chest, so that the thorax, 
flattened down, touched the back. He could not 
breathe ; the pain reached the shoulders, then the 
neck, and paralyzed the left arm. But he was per- 
fectly conscious; he had the feeling that his heart 
was about to stop, that life was about to leave him, 
in the dreadful oppression, like that of a vise, which 
was suffocating him. Before the attack reached its 
height he had the strength to rise and to knock on 
the floor with a stick for Martine. Then he fell 
back on his bed, unable to speak or to move, and 
covered with a cold sweat. 

Martine, fortunately, in the profound silence of 
the empty house, heard the knock. She dressed 
herself, wrapped a shawl about her, and went up- 
stairs, carrying her candle. The darkness was still 
profound ; dawn was about to break. And when 
she perceived her master, whose eyes alone seemed 
living, looking at her with locked jaws, speechless, 
his face distorted by pain, she was awed and terri- 


39 6 DOCTOR RASCAL. 

fied, and she could only rush toward the bed, 
crying : 

“My God! My God! what is the matter, mon- 
sieur? Answer me, monsieur, you frighten me!” 

For a full minute Pascal struggled in vain to 
recover his breath. Then, the viselike pressure on 
his chest relaxing slowly, he murmured in a faint 
voice : 

“The five thousand francs in the desk are 
Clotilde’s. Tell her that the affair of the notary is 
settled, that she will recover from it enough to live 
upon.” 

Then Martine, who had listened to him in open- 
mouthed wonder, confessed the falsehood she had 
told him, ignorant of the good news that had been 
brought by Ramond. 

“Monsieur, you must forgive me; I told you an 
untruth. But it would be wrong to deceive you 
longer. When I saw you alone and so unhappy, 1 
took some of my own money.” 

“My poor girl, you did that!” 

“Oh, I had some hope that monsieur would return 
it to me one day.” 

By this time the attack had passed off, and he 
was able to turn his head and look at her. He was 
amazed and moved. What was passing in the heart 
of this avaricious old maid, who for thirty years had 
been saving up her treasure painfully, who had 
never taken a sou from it, either for herself or for 
anyone else? He did not yet comprehend, but he 
wished to show himself kind and grateful. 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


397 


“You are a good woman, Martine. All that will 
be returned to you. I truly think I am going to 
die ” 

She did not allow him to finish, her whole being 
rose up in rebellious protest. 

“Die; you, monsieur! Die before me ! I do not 
wish it. I will not let you die !” 

She threw herself on her knees beside the bed ; 
she caught him wildly in her arms, feeling him, to 
see if he suffered, holding him as if she thought 
that death would not dare to take him from her. 

“You must tell me what is the matter with you. 
I will take care of you. I will save you. If it were 
necessary to give my life for you, I would give it, 
monsieur. I will sit up day and night with you. I 
am strong still ; I will be stronger than the disease, 
you shall see. To die ! to die ! oh, no, it cannot be ! 
The good God cannot wish so great an injustice. I 
have prayed so much in my life that he ought to 
listen to me a little now, and he will grant my 
prayer, monsieur; he will save you.” 

Pascal looked at her, listened to her, and a sudden 
light broke in upon his mind. She loved him, this 
miserable woman ; she had always loved him. He 
thought of her thirty years of blind devotion, her 
mute adoration, when she had waited upon him, on 
her knees, as it were, when she was young; her 
secret jealousy of Clotilde later; what she must 
have secretly suffered all that time ! And she was 
here on her knees now again, beside his deathbed ; 
her hair gray; her eyes the color of ashes in her 


39 8 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


pale nunlike face, dulled by her solitary life. And 
he felt that she was unconscious of it all ; that she 
did not even know with what sort of love she loved 
him, loving him only for the happiness of loving 
him : of being with him, and of waiting on him. 

Tears rose to Pascal’s eyes; a dolorous pity and 
an infinite human tenderness flowed from his poor, 
half-broken heart. 

“My poor girl,” he said, “you are the best of 
girls. Come, embrace me, as you love me, with all 
your strength.” 

She, too, sobbed. She let her gray head, her face 
worn by her long servitude, fall on her master’s 
breast. Wildly she kissed him, putting all her life 
into the kiss. 

“There, let us not give way to emotion, for you 
see we can do nothing; this will be the end, just the 
same. If you wish me to love you, obey me. Now 
that I am better, that I can breathe easier, do me 
the favor to run to Dr. Ramond’s. Waken him and 
bring him back with you.” 

She was leaving the room when he called to her, 
seized by a sudden fear. 

“And remember, I forbid you to go to inform my 
mother.” 

She turned back, embarrassed, and in a voice of 
entreaty, said : 

“Oh, monsieur, Mme. Felicite has made me prom- 
ise so often ” 

But he was inflexible. All his life he had treated 
his mother with deference, and he thought he had 


DOCTOR PASCAL . 


399 


acquired the right to defend himself against her in 
the hour of his death. He would not let the serv- 
ant go until she had promised him that she would 
be silent. Then he smiled once more. 

“Go quickly. Oh, you will see me again; it will 
not be yet.” 

Day broke at last, the melancholy dawn of a pale 
November day. Pascal had had the shutters 
opened, and when he was left alone he watched 
the brightening dawn, doubtless that of his last day 
of life. It had rained the night before, and the 
mild sun was still veiled by clouds. From the 
plane trees came the morning carols of the birds, 
while far away in the sleeping country a locomotive 
whistled with a prolonged moan. And he was 
alone; alone in the great melancholy house, whose 
emptiness he felt around him, whose silence he 
heard. The light slowly increased, and he watched 
the patches it made on the window-panes broaden- 
ing and brightening. Then the candle paled in the 
growing light, and the whole room became visible. 
And with the dawn, as he had anticipated, came 
relief. The sight of the familiar objects around him 
brought him consolation. 

But Pascal, although the attack had passed away, 
still suffered horribly. A sharp pain remained in 
the hollow of his chest, and his left arm, benumbed, 
hung from his shoulder like lead. In his long wait- 
ing for the help that Martine had gone to bring, he 
had reflected on the suffering which made the flesh 
cry out. And he found that he was resigned ; he 


400 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


no longer felt the rebelliousness which the mere 
sight of physical pain had formerly awakened in 
him. It had exasperated him, as if it had been a 
monstrous and useless cruelty of nature. In his 
doubts as a physician, he had attended his patients 
only to combat it, and to relieve it. If he ended by 
accepting it, now that he himself suffered its horri- 
ble torture, was it that he had risen one degree 
higher in his faith in life, to that serene height 
whence life appeared altogether good, even with 
the fatal condition of suffering attached to it ; suffer- 
ing which is perhaps its spring? Yes, to live all of 
life, to live it and to suffer it all without rebellion, 
without believing that it is made better by being 
made painless, this presented itself clearly to his 
dying eyes, as the greatest courage and the greatest 
wisdom. And to cheat pain while he waited, he 
reviewed his latest theories; he dreamed of a means 
of utilizing suffering by transforming it into action, 
into work. If it be true that man feels pain more 
acutely according as he rises in the scale of civiliza- 
tion, it is also certain that he becomes stronger 
through it, better armed against it, more capable of 
resisting it. The organ, the brain which works, 
develops and grows stronger, provided the equilib- 
rium between the sensations which it receives and 
the work which it gives back be not broken. Might 
not one hope, then, for a humanity in which the 
amount of work accomplished would so exactly 
equal the sum of sensations received, that suffering 
would be utilized and, as it were, abolished? 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


401 


The sun had risen, and Pascal was confusedly 
revolving these distant hopes in his mind, in the 
drowsiness produced by his disease, when he felt a 
new attack coming on. He had a moment of cruel 
anxiety — was this the end? Was he going to die 
alone? But at this instant hurried footsteps 
mounted the stairs, and a moment later Ramond 
entered, followed by Martine. And the patient had 
time to say before the attack began : 

“Quick! quick! a hypodermic injection of pure 
water.” 

Unfortunately the doctor had to look for the 
little syringe and then to prepare everything. This 
occupied some minutes, and the attack was terrible. 
He followed its progress with anxiety — the face 
becoming distorted, the lips growing livid. Then 
when he had given the injection, he observed that 
the phenomena, for a moment stationary, slowly 
diminished in intensity Once more the catastro- 
phe was averted. 

As soon as he recovered his breath Pascal, glanc- 
ing at the clock, said in h*s calm, faint voice: 

“My friend, it is seven o’clock — in twelve hours, 
at seven o’clock to-night, I shall be dead.” 

And as the young man was about to protest, to 
argue the question, “No,” he resumed, “do not 
try to deceive me. You have witnessed the attack. 
You know what it means as well as I do. Every- 
thing will now proceed with mathematical exact- 
ness; and, hour by hour, I could describe to you 
the phases of the disease,” 


402 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


He stopped, gasped for breath, and then added : 

“And then, all is well; I am content. Clotilde 
will be here at five; all I ask is to see her and to die 
in her arms/’ 

A few moments later, however, he experienced a 
sensible improvement. The effect of the injection 
seemed truly miraculous; and he was able to sit up 
in bed, his back resting against the pillows. He 
spoke clearly, and with more ease, and never had 
the lucidity of his mind appeared greater. 

“You know, master,” said Ramond, “that I will 
not leave you. I have told my wife, and we will 
spend the day together; and, whatever you may say 
to the contrary, I am very confident that it will not 
be the last. You will let me make myself at home 
here, will you not?” 

Pascal smiled, and gave orders to Martine to go 
and prepare breakfast for Ramond, saying that if they 
needed her they would call her. And the two men 
remained alone, conversing with friendly intimacy ; 
the one with his white hair and long white beard, 
lying down, discoursing like a sage, the other sitting 
at his bedside, listening with the respect of a disciple. 

“In truth,” murmured the master, as if he were 
speaking to himself, “the effect of those injections 
is extraordinary.” 

Then in a stronger voice, he said almost gayly : 

“My friend Ramond, it may not be a very great 
present that I am giving you, but I am going to 
leave you my manuscripts. Yes, Clotilde has orders 
to send them to you when I shall be no more. 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


4°3 

Look through them, and you will perhaps find 
among them things that are not so very bad. If 
you get a good idea from them some day — well, 
that will be so much the better for the world.” 

And then he made his scientific testament. He 
was clearly conscious that he had been himself only 
a solitary pioneer, a precursor, planning theories 
which he tried to put in practice, but which failed 
because of the imperfection of his method. He 
recalled his enthusiasm when he believed he had 
discovered, in his injections of nerve substance, the 
universal panacea, then his disappointments, his fits 
of despair, the shocking death of Lafouasse, con- 
sumption carrying off Valentin in spite of all his 
efforts, madness again conquering Sarteur and caus- 
ing him to hang himself. So that he would depart 
full of doubt, having no longer the confidence neces- 
sary to the physician, and so enamored of life that he 
had ended by putting all his faith in it, certain that 
it must draw from itself alone its health and 
strength. But he did not wish to close up the 
future; he was glad, on the contrary, to bequeath 
his hypotheses to the younger generation. Every 
twenty years theories changed ; established truths 
only, on which science continued to build, remained 
unshaken. Even if he had only the merit of giving 
to science a momentary hypothesis, his work would 
not be lost, for progress consisted assuredly in the 
effort, in the onward march of the intellect. 

And then who could say that he had died in vain, 
troubled and weary, his hopes concerning the injec- 


404 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


tions unrealized — other workers would come, young, 
ardent, confident, who would take up the idea, elu- 
cidate it, expand it. And perhaps a new epoch, a 
new world would date from this. 

“Ah, my dear Ramond,” he continued, “if one 
could only live life over again. Yes, I would take 
up my idea again, for I have been struck lately by 
the singular efficacy of injections even of pure 
water. It is not the liquid, then, that matters, but 
simply the mechanical action. During the last 
month I have written a great deal on that subject. 
You will find some curious notes and observations 
there. In short, I should be inclined to put all my 
faith in work, to place health in the harmonious 
working of all the organs, a sort of dynamic thera- 
peutics, if I may venture to use the expres- 
sion.’ 

He had gradually grown excited, forgetting his 
approaching death in his ardent curiosity about life. 
And he sketched, with broad strokes, his last theory. 
Man was surrounded by a medium — nature — which 
irritated by perpetual contact the sensitive extrem- 
ities of the nerves. Hence the action, not only of 
the senses, but of the entire surface of the body, 
external and internal. For it was these sensations 
which, reverberating in the brain, in the marrow, and 
in the nervous centers, were there converted into 
tonicity, movements, and thoughts; and he was 
convinced that health consisted in the natural prog- 
ress of this work, in receiving sensations, and in 
giving them back in thoughts and in actions, the 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


405 


human machine being thus fed by the regular play 
of the organs. Work thus became the great law, 
the regulator of the living universe. Hence it 
became necessary if the equilibrium were broken, if 
the external excitations ceased to be sufficient, for 
therapeutics to create artificial excitations, in order 
to re-establish the tonicity which is the state of 
perfect health. And he dreamed of a whole new 
system of treatment — suggestion, the all-powerful 
authority of the physician, for the senses; electric- 
ity, friction, massage for the skin and for the ten- 
dons ; diet for the stomach ; air cures on high 
plateaus for the lungs, and, finally, transfusion, 
injections of distilled water, for the circulatory sys- 
tem. It was the undeniable and purely mechanical 
action of these latter that had put him on the track; 
all he did now was to extend the hypothesis, im- 
pelled by his generalizing spirit ; he saw the world 
saved anew in this perfect equilibrium, as much 
work given as sensation received, the balance of the 
world restored by unceasing labor. 

Here he burst into a frank laugh. 

“There! I have started off again. I, who was 
firmly convinced that the only wisdom was not to 
interfere, to let nature take its course. Ah, what an 
incorrigible old fool I am !” 

Ramond caught his hands in an outburst of 
admiration and affection. 

“Master, master! it is of enthusiasm, of folly 
like yours that genius is made. Have no fear, 
I have listened to you, I will endeavor to be 


406 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


worthy of the heritage you leave ; and I think, with 
you, that perhaps the great future lies entirely 
there.” 

In the sad and quiet room Pascal began to speak 
again, with the courageous tranquility of a dying 
philosopher giving his last lesson. He now reviewed 
his personal observations; he said that he had often 
cured himself by work, regular and methodical work, 
not carried to excess. Eleven o’clock struck ; he 
urged Ramond to take his breakfast, and he contin- 
ued the conversation, soaring to lofty and distant 
heights, while Martine served the meal. The sun 
had at last burst through the morning mists, a sun 
still half-veiled in clouds, and mild, whose golden 
light warmed the room. Presently, after taking a 
few sips of milk, Pascal remained silent. 

At this moment the young physician was eating 
a pear. 

“Are you in pain again?” he asked. 

“No, no; finish.” 

But he could not deceive Ramond. It was an 
attack, and a terrible one. The suffocation came 
with the swiftness of a thunderbolt, and he fell back 
on the pillow, his face already blue. He clutched 
at the bedclothes to support himself, to raise the 
dreadful weight which oppressed his chest. Terri- 
fied, livid, he kept his wide open eyes fixed upon 
the clock, with a dreadful expression of despair and 
grief; and for ten minutes it seemed as if every 
moment must be his last. 

Ramond had immediately given him a hypodermic 


doctor pascal. 407 

injection. The relief was slow to come, the efficacy 
less than before. 

When Pascal revived, large tears stood in his eyes. 
He did not speak now, he wept. Presently, looking 
at the clock with his darkening vision, he said : 

“My friend, I shall die at four o’clock; I shall not 
see her.” 

And as his young colleague, in order to divert his 
thoughts, declared, in spite of appearances, that the 
end was not so near, Pascal, again becoming enthu- 
siastic, wished to give him a last lesson, based on 
direct observation. He had, as it happened, at- 
tended several cases similar to his own, and he 
remembered especially to have dissected at the 
hospital the heart of a poor old man affected with 
sclerosis. 

“I can see it — my heart. It is the color of a dead 
leaf ; its fibers are brittle, wasted, one would say, 
although it has augmented slightly in volume. The 
inflammatory process has hardened it ; it would be 
difficult to cut ” 

He continued in a lower voice. A little before, 
he had felt his heart growing weaker, its contrac- 
tions becoming feebler and slower. Instead of the 
normal jet of blood there now issued from the aorta 
only a red froth. Back of it all the veins were 
engorged with black blood ; the suffocation in- 
creased, according as the lift and force pump, the 
regulator of the whole machine, moved more slowly. 
And after the injection he had been able to follow 
in spite of his suffering the gradual reviving of the 


4^8 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


organ as the stimulus set it beating again, removing 
the black venous blood, and sending life into it 
anew, with the red arterial blood. But the attack 
would return as soon as the mechanical effect of the 
injection should cease. He could predict it almost 
within a few minutes. Thanks to the injections he 
would have three attacks more. The third would 
carry him off; he would die at four o’clock. 

Then, while his voice grew gradually weaker, in a 
last outburst of enthusiasm, he apostrophized the 
courage of the heart, that persistent life-maker, 
working ceaselessly, even during sleep, when the 
other organs rested. 

“Ah, brave heart! how heroically you struggle! 
What faithful, what generous muscles, never 
wearied! You have loved too much, you have 
beat too fast in the past months, and that is why 
you are breaking now, brave heart, who do not wish 
to die, and who strive rebelliously to beat still !” 

But now the first of the attacks which had been 
announced came on. Pascal came out of this pant- 
ing, haggard, his speech sibilant and painful. Low 
moans escaped him, in spite of his courage. Good 
God! would this torture never end? And yet his 
most ardent desire was to prolong his agony, to live 
long enough to embrace Clotilde a last time. If he 
might only be deceiving himself, as Ramond per- 
sisted in declaring. If he might only live until five 
o’clock. His eyes again turned to the clock, they 
never now left the hands, every minute seeming an 
eternity. They marked three o’clock. Then half- 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 409 

past three. Ah, God ! only two hours of life, two 
hours more of life. The sun was already sinking 
toward the horizon ; a great calm descended from 
the pale winter sky, and he heard at intervals the 
whistles of the distant locomotives crossing the 
bare plain. The train that was passing now was 
the one going to the Tulettes; the other, the one 
coming from Marseilles, would it never arrive, then? 

At twenty minutes to four Pascal signed to 
Ramond to approach. He could no longer speak 
loud enough to be heard. 

“You see, in order that I might live until six 
o'clock, the pulse should be stronger. I have still 
some hope, however, but the second movement is 
almost imperceptible, the heart will soon cease to 
beat.” 

And in faint, despairing accents he called on 
Clotilde again and again. The immeasurable grief 
which he felt at not being able to see her again 
broke forth in this faltering and agonized appeal. 
Then his anxiety about his manuscripts returned, 
an ardent entreaty shone in his eyes, until at last 
he found the strength to falter again : 

“Do not leave me; the key is under my pillow; 
tell Clotilde to take it; she has my directions.” 

At ten minutes to four another hypodermic 
injection was given, but without effect. And just 
as four o’clock was striking, the second attack de- 
clared itself. Suddenly, after a fit of suffocation, 
he threw himself out of bed ; he desired to rise, to 
walk, in a last revival of his strength. A need of 


416 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


space, of light, of air, urged him toward the skies. 
Then there came to him an irresistible appeal from 
life, his whole life, from the adjoining workroom, 
where he had spent his days. And he went there, 
staggering, suffocating, bending to the left side, 
supporting himself by the furniture. 

Dr. Ramond precipitated himself quickly toward 
him to stop him, crying: 

“Master, master! lie down again, I entreat you!” 

But Pascal paid no heed to him, obstinately de- 
termined to die on his feet. The desire to live, the 
heroic idea of work, alone survived in him, carrying 
him onward bodily. He faltered hoarsely: 

“No, no — out there, out there ” 

His friend was obliged to support him, and he 
walked thus, stumbling and haggard, to the end of 
the workroom, and dropped into his chair beside 
his table, on which an unfinished page still lay 
among a confusion of papers and books. 

Here he gasped for breath and his eyes closed. 
After a moment he opened them again, while his 
hands groped about, seeking his work, no doubt. 
They encountered the genealogical tree in the midst 
of other papers scattered about. Only two days 
before he had corrected some dates in it. He recog- 
nized it, and drawing it toward him, spread it 
out. 

“Master, master! you will kill yourself!” cried 
Ramond, overcome with pity and admiration at this 
extraordinary spectacle. 

Pascal did not listen, did not hear. He felt a 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


411 

pencil under his fingers. He took it and bent over 
the tree, as if his dying eyes no longer saw. The 
name of Maxime arrested his attention, and he 
wrote: “Died of ataxia in 1873,” in the certainty 
that his nephew would not live through the year. 
Then Clotilde’s name, beside it, struck him and he 
completed the note thus: “Has a son, by her Uncle 
Pascal, in 1874.” But it was his own name that he 
sought wearily and confusedly. When he at last 
found it his hand grew firmer, and he finished his 
note, in upright and bold characters: “Died of heart 
disease,. November 7, 1873.” This was the supreme 
effort, the rattle in his throat increased, everything 
was fading into nothingness, when he perceived the 
blank leaf above Clotilde’s name. His vision grew 
dark, his fingers could no longer hold the pencil, but 
he was still able to add, in unsteady letters, into 
which passed the tortured tenderness, the wild dis- 
order of his poor heart: “The unknown child, 
to be born in 1874. What will it be?” Then he 
swooned, and Martine and Ramond with difficulty 
carried him back to bed. 

The third attack came on about four o’clock. 
In this last access of suffocation Pascal’s counte- 
nance expressed excruciating suffering. Death was 
to be very painful; he must endure to the end his 
martyrdom, as a man and a scientist. His wander- 
ing gaze still seemed to seek the clock, to ascertain 
the hour. And Ramond, seeing his lips move, bent 
down and placed his ear to the mouth of the dying 
man. The latter, in effect, was stammering some 


412 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


vague words, so faint that they scarcely rose above 
a breath : 

“Four o’clock — the heart is stopping; no more 
red blood in the aorta — the valve relaxes and 
bursts.” 

A dreadful spasm shook him ; his breathing grew 
fainter. 

“Its progress is too rapid. Do not leave me; the 
key is under the pillow — Clotilde, Clotilde ” 

At the foot of the bed Martine was kneeling, 
choked with sobs. She saw well that monsieur was 
dying. She had not dared to go for a priest not- 
withstanding her great desire to do so; and she was 
herself reciting the prayers for the dying; she 
prayed ardently that God would pardon monsieur, 
and that monsieur might go straight to Paradise. 

Pascal was dying. His face was quite blue. 
After a few seconds of complete immobility, he tried 
to breathe; he put out his lips, opened his poor 
mouth, like a little bird opening its beak to get a 
last mouthful of air. And he was dead. 


XIII. 


It was not until after breakfast, at about one 
o’clock, that Clotilde received the dispatch. On 
this day it had chanced that she had quarreled with 
her brother Maxime, who, taking advantage of his 
privileges as an invalid, had tormented her more and 
more every day by his unreasonable caprices and 
his outbursts of ill temper. In short, her visit to 
him had not proved a success. He found that she 
was too simple and too serious to cheer him ; and 
he had preferred, of late, the society of Rose, the 
fair-haired young girl, with the innocent look, who 
amused him. So that when his sister told him that 
their uncle had sent for her, and that she was going 
away, he gave his approval at once, and although he 
asked her to return as soon as she should have 
settled her affairs at home, he did so only with the 
desire of showing himself amiable, and he did not 
press the invitation. 

Clotilde spent the afternoon in packing her trunks. 
In the feverish excitement of so sudden a decision 
she had thought of nothing but the joy of her 
return. But after the hurry of dinner was over, after 
she had said good-by to her brother, after the inter- 
minable drive in a hackney coach along the avenue 
of the Bois de Boulogne to the Lyons railway sta- 
4*3 


414 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


tion, when she found herself in the ladies’ compart- 
ment, starting on the long journey on a cold and 
rainy November night, already rolling away from 
Paris, her excitement began to abate, and reflections 
forced their way into her mind and began to trouble 
her. Why this brief and urgent dispatch: “I await 
you ; start this evening.” Doubtless it was the 
answer to her letter; but she knew how greatly 
Pascal had desired that she should remain in Paris, 
where he thought she was happy, and she was 
astonished at his hasty summons. She had not 
expected a dispatch, but a letter, arranging for her 
return a few weeks later. There must be some- 
thing else, then ; perhaps he was ill and felt a desire, 
a longing to see her again at once. And from this 
time forward this fear seized her with the force of a 
presentiment, and grew stronger and stronger, until 
it soon took complete possession of her. 

All night long the rain beat furiously against the 
windows of the train while they were crossing the 
plains of Burgundy, and did not cease until they 
reached Macon. When they had passed Lyons the 
day broke. Clotilde had Pascal’s letters with her, 
and she had waited impatiently for the daylight 
that she might read again carefully these letters, the 
writing of which had seemed changed to her. And 
noticing the unsteady characters, the breaks in the 
words, she felt a chill at her heart. He was ill, very 
ill — she had become certain of this now, by a divina- 
tion in which there was less of reasoning than of 
subtle prescience. And the rest of the journey 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


415 


seemed terribly long, for her anguish increased in 
proportion as she approached its termination. And 
worse than all, arriving at Marseilles at half-past 
twelve, there was no train for Plassans until twenty 
minutes past three. Three long hours of waiting! 
She breakfasted at the buffet in the railway station, 
eating hurriedly, as if she was afraid of missing this 
train ; then she dragged herself into the dusty gar- 
den, going from bench to bench in the pale, mild 
sunshine, among omnibuses and hackney coaches. 
At last she was once more in the train, which 
stopped at every little way station. When they 
were approaching Plassans she put her head out of 
the window eagerly, longing to see the town again 
after her short absence of two months. It seemed 
to her as if she had been away for twenty years, and 
that everything must be changed. When the train 
was leaving the little station of Sainte-Marthe her 
emotion reached its height when, leaning out, she 
saw in the distance La Souleiade with the two 
secular cypresses on the terrace, which could be 
seen three leagues off. 

It was five o’clock, and twilight was already fall- 
ing. The train stopped, and Clotilde descended. 
But it was a surprise and a keen grief to her not to 
see Pascal waiting for her on the platform. She had 
been saying to herself since they had left Lyons: 
“If I do not see him at once, on the arrival of the 
train, it will be because he is ill.” He might be in 
the waiting room, however, or with a carriage out- 
side. She hurried forward, but she saw no one but 


416 doctor rascal. 

Father Durieu, a driver whom the doctor was in the 
habit of employing. She questioned him eagerly. 
The [old man, a taciturn Provencal, was in no haste 
to answer. His wagon was there, and he asked her 
for the checks for her luggage, wishing to see about 
the trunks before anything else. In a trembling 
voice she repeated her questiofi : 

“Is everybody well, Father Durieu?” 

“Yes, mademoiselle.” 

And she was obliged to put question after ques- 
tion to him before she succeeded in eliciting the 
information that it was Martine who had told him, 
at about six o’clock the day before, to be at the 
station with his wagon, in time to meet the train. 
He had not seen the doctor, no one had seen him, 
for two months past. It might very well be since 
he was not here that he had been obliged to take to 
his bed, for there was a report in the town that he 
was not very well. 

“Wait until I get the luggage, mademoiselle,” he 
ended, “there is room for you on the seat.” 

“No, Father Durieu, it would be too long to wait. 
I will walk.” 

She ascended the slope rapidly. Her heart was 
so tightened that she could scarcely breathe. The 
sun had sunk behind the hills of Sainte-Marthe, and 
a fine mist was falling from the chill gray November 
sky, and as she took the road to Les Fenouilleres 
she caught another glimpse of La Souleiade, which 
struck a chill to her heart — the front of the house, 
with all its shutters closed, and wearing a look of 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


417 


abandonment and desolation in the melancholy 
twilight. 

But Clotilde received the final and terrible blow 
when she saw Ramond standing at the hall door, 
apparently waiting for her. He had indeed been 
watching for her, and had come downstairs to break 
the dreadful news gently to her. She arrived out of 
breath; she had crossed the quincunx of plane trees 
near the fountain to shorten the way, and on seeing 
the young man there instead of Pascal, whom she 
had in spite of everything expected to see, she had 
a presentiment of overwhelming ruin, of irreparable 
misfortune. Ramond was pale and agitated, not- 
withstanding the effort he made to control his 
feelings. At the first moment he could not find a 
word to say, but waited to be questioned. Clotilde, 
who was herself suffocating, said nothing. And 
they entered the house thus ; he led her to the din- 
ing room, where they remained for a few seconds, 
face to face, in mute anguish. 

“He is ill, is he not?” she at last faltered. 

“Yes,” he said, “he is ill.” 

“I knew it at once when I saw you,” she replied. 
“I knew when he was not here that he must be ill. 
He is very ill, is he not?” she persisted. 

As he did not answer but grew still paler, she 
looked at him fixedly. And on the instant she saw 
the shadow of death upon him ; on his hands that 
still trembled, that had assisted the dying man ; on 
his sad face ; in his troubled eyes, which still retained 
the reflection of the death agony ; in the neglected 


418 DOCTOR RASCAL . 

and disordered appearance of the physician who, for 
twelve hours, had maintained an unavailing struggle 
against death. 

She gave a loud cry: 

‘'He is dead !” 

She tottered, and fell fainting into the arms of 
Ramond, who with a great sob pressed her in a 
brotherly embrace. And thus they wept on each 
other’s neck. 

When he had seated her in a chair, and she was 
able to speak, he said : 

“It was I who took the dispatch you received to 
the telegraph office yesterday, at half-past ten 
o’clock. He was so happy, so full of hope! He 
was forming plans for the future — a year, two years 
of life. And this morning, at four o’clock, he had 
the first attack, and he sent for me. He saw at once 
that he was doomed, but he expected to last until 
six o’clock, to live long enough to see you again. 
But the disease progressed too rapidly. He de- 
scribed its progress to me, minute by minute, like a 
professor in the dissecting room. He died with 
your name upon his lips, calm, but full of anguish, 
like a hero.” 

Clotilde listened, her eyes drowned in tears which 
flowed endlessly. Every word of the relation of 
this piteous and stoical death penetrated her heart 
and stamped itself there. She reconstructed every 
hour of the dreadful day. She followed to its close 
its grand and mournful drama. She would live it 
over in her thoughts forever. 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


419 


But her despairing grief overflowed when Martine, 
who had entered the room a moment before, said in 
a harsh voice : 

"Ah, mademoiselle has good reason to cry! for if 
monsieur is dead, mademoiselle is to blame for 
it.” 

The old servant stood apart, near the door of 
her kitchen, in such a passion of angry grief, because 
they had taken her master from her, because they 
had killed him, that she did not even try to find a 
word of welcome or consolation for this child whom 
she had brought up. And without calculating the 
consequences of her indiscretion, the grief or the 
joy which she might cause, she relieved herself by 
telling all she knew. 

“Yes, if monsieur has died, it is because made- 
moiselle went away.” 

From the depths of her overpowering grief 
Clotilde protested. She had expected to see Mar- 
tine weeping with her, like Ramond, and she was 
surprised to feel that she was an enemy. 

“Why, it was he who would not let me stay, who 
insisted upon my going away,” she said. 

"Oh, well! mademoiselle must have been willing 
to go or she would have been more clear-sighted. 
The night before your departure I found monsieur 
half-suffocated with grief ; and when I wished to 
inform mademoiselle, he himself prevented me; he 
had such courage. Then I could see it all, after 
mademoiselle had gone. Every night it was the 
same thing over again, and he could hardly keep 


420 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


from writing to you to come back. In short, he 
died of it, that is the pure truth.” 

A great light broke in on Clotilde’s mind, making 
her at the same time very happy and very wretched. 
Good God ! what she had suspected for a moment, 
was then true. Afterward she had been convinced, 
seeing Pascal’s angry persistence, that he was speak- 
ing the truth ; that between her and work he had 
chosen work sincerely, like a man of science with 
whom love of work has gained the victory over the 
love of woman. And yet he had not spoken the 
truth; he had carried his devotion, his self-forgetful- 
ness to the point of immolating himself to what he 
believed to be her happiness. And the misery of 
things willed that he should have been mistaken, 
that he should have thus consummated the unhap- 
piness of both. 

Clotilde again protested wildly: 

“But how could I have known? I obeyed; I put 
all my love in my obedience.” 

“Ah,” cried Martine again, “it seems to me that I 
should have guessed.” 

Ramond interposed gently. He took Clotilde’s 
hands once more in his, and explained to her that 
grief might indeed have hastened the fatal issue, but 
that the master had unhappily been doomed for 
some time past. The affection of the heart from 
which he had suffered must have been of long 
standing — a great deal of overwork, a certain part of 
heredity, and, finally, his late absorbing love, and 
the poor heart had broken. 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


421 


“Let us go upstairs,” said Clotilde simply. “I 
wish to see him.” 

Upstairs in the death-chamber the blinds were 
closed, shutting out even the melancholy twilight. 
On a little table at the foot of the bed burned two 
tapers in two candlesticks. And they cast a pale 
yellow light on Pascal's form extended on the bed, 
the feet close together, the hands folded on the 
breast. The eyes had been piously closed. The 
face, of a bluish hue still, but already looking calm 
and peaceful, framed by the flowing white hair and 
beard, seemed asleep. He had been dead scarcely 
an hour and a half, yet already infinite serenity, 
eternal silence, eternal repose, had begun. 

Seeing him thus, at the thought that he no longer 
heard her, that he no longer saw her, that she was 
alone now, that she was to kiss him for the last time, 
and then lose him forever, Clotilde, in an outburst 
of grief, threw herself upon the bed, and in broken 
accents of passionate tenderness cried : 

“Oh, master, master, master ” 

She pressed her lips to the dead man’s forehead, 
and, feeling it still warm with life, she had a momen- 
tary illusion : she fancied that he felt this last caress, 
so cruelly awaited. Did he not smile in his immo- 
bility, happy at last, and able to die, now that he 
felt her here beside him? Then, overcome by 
the dreadful reality, she burst again into wild 
sobs. 

Martine entered, bringing a lamp, which she 
placed on a corner of the chimney-piece, and she 


422 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


heard Ramond, who was watching Clotilde, dis- 
quieted at seeing her passionate grief, say : 

“I shall take you away from the room if you give 
way like this. Consider that you have someone 
else to think of now.” 

The servant had been surprised at certain words 
which she had overheard by chance during the day. 
Suddenly she understood, and she turned paler even 
than before, and on her way out of the room, she 
stopped at the door to hear more. 

"The key of the press is under his pillow,” said 
Ramond, lowering his voice; “he told me repeat- 
edly to tell you so. You know what you have to 
do?” 

Clotilde made an effort to remember and to 
answer. 

“What I have to do? About the papers, is it 
not? Yes, yes, I remember; I am to keep the 
envelopes and to give you the other manuscripts. 
Have no fear, I am quite calm, I will be very 
reasonable. But I will not leave him ; I will spend 
the night here very quietly, I promise you.” 

She was so unhappy, she seemed so resolved to 
watch by him, to remain with him, until he should 
be taken away, that the young physician allowed 
her to have her way. 

"Well, I will leave you now. They will be ex- 
pecting me at home. Then there are all sorts of 
formalities to be gone through — to give notice at 
the mayor’s office, the funeral, of which I wish to 
spare you the details. Trouble yourself about 


DOCTOR PASCAL . 


423 


nothing. Everything will be arranged to-morrow 
when 1 return.” 

He embraced her once more and then went away. 
And it was only then that Martine left the room, 
behind him, and locking the hall door she ran out 
into the darkness. 

Clotilde was now alone in the chamber; and all 
around and about her, in the unbroken silence, she 
felt the emptiness of the house. Clotilde was alone 
with the dead Pascal. She placed a chair at the 
head of the bed and sat there motionless, alone. 
On arriving, she had merely removed her hat ; now, 
perceiving that she still had on her gloves, she took 
them off also. But she kept on her traveling dress, 
crumpled and dusty, after twenty hours of railway 
travel. No doubt Father Durieu had brought the 
trunks long ago, and left them downstairs. But it 
did not occur to her, nor had she r the strength to 
wash herself and change her clothes, but remained 
sitting, overwhelmed with grief, on the chair into 
which she had dropped. One regret, a great 
remorse, filled her to the exclusion of all else. 
Why had she obeyed him? Why had she consented 
to leave him? If she had remained she had the 
ardent conviction that he would not have died. 
She would have lavished so much love, so many 
caresses upon him, that she would have cured him. 
If one was anxious to keep a beloved being from 
dying one should remain with him and, if necessary, 
give one’s heart’s blood to keep him alive. It was 
her own fault if she had lost him, if she could not 


424 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


now with a caress awaken him from his eternal 
sleep. And she thought herself imbecile not to 
have understood ; cowardly, not to have devoted 
herself to him; culpable and to be forever punished 
for having gone away when plain common sense, in 
default of feeling, ought to have kept her here, 
bound, as a submissive and affectionate subject, to 
the task of watching over her king. 

The silence had become so complete, so profound, 
that Clotilde lifted her eyes for a moment from Pas- 
cal’s face to look around the room. She saw only 
vague shadows — the two tapers threw two yellow 
patches on the high ceiling. At this moment she 
remembered the letters he had written to her, so 
short, so cold ; and she comprehended his heroic 
sacrifice, the torture it had been to him to silence 
his heart, desiring to immolate himself to the end. 
What strength must he not have required for the 
accomplishment of the plan of happiness, sublime 
and disastrous, which he had formed for her. He had 
resolved to pass out of her life in order to save her 
from his old age and his poverty; he wished her to 
be rich and free, to enjoy her youth, far away from 
him ; this indeed was utter self-effacement, complete 
absorption in the love of another. And she felt a 
profound gratitude, a sweet solace in the thought, 
mingled with a sort of angry bitterness against evil 
fortune. Then, suddenly, the happy years of her 
childhood and her long youth spent beside him who 
had always been so kind and so good-humored, rose 
before her — how he had gradually won her affec- 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 425 

tion, how she had felt that she was his, after the 
quarrels which had separated them for a time, and 
with what a transport of joy she had at last given 
herself to him. 

Seven o’clock struck. Clotilde started as the clear 
tones broke the profound silence. Who was it that 
had spoken? Then she remembered, and she looked 
at the clock. And when the last sound of the seven 
strokes, each of which had fallen like a knell upon 
her heart, had died away, she turned her eyes again 
on the motionless face of Pascal, and once more she 
abandoned herself to her grief. 

It was in the midst of this ever-increasing pros- 
tration that Clotilde, a few minutes later, heard a 
sudden sound of sobbing. Someone had rushed 
into the room; she looked round and saw her grand- 
mother Felicite. But she did not stir, she did not 
speak, so benumbed was she with grief. Martine, 
anticipating the orders which Clotilde would un- 
doubtedly have given her, had hurried to old Mine. 
Rougon’s, to give her the dreadful news; and the 
latter, dazed at first by the suddenness of the catas- 
trophe, and afterward greatly agitated, had hurried 
to the house, overflowing with noisy grief. She 
burst into tears at sight of her son, and then em- 
braced Clotilde, who returned her kiss, as in a dream. 
And from this instant the latter, without emerging 
from the overwhelming grief in which she isolated 
herself, felt that she was no longer alone, hearing a 
continual stir and bustle going on around her. It 
was Felicity crying, coming in and going out on 


426 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


tiptoe, setting things in order, spying about, whisp- 
ering, dropping into a chair, to get up again a mo- 
ment afterward, after saying that she was going to 
die in it. At nine o’clock she made a last effort 
to persuade her granddaughter to eat something. 
Twice already she had lectured her in a low voice; 
she came now again to whisper to her: 

“Clotilde, my dear, I assure you you are wrong. 
You must keep up your strength or you will never 
be able to hold out.” 

But the young woman, with a shake of her head, 
again refused. 

“Come, you breakfasted at the buffet at Mar- 
seilles, I suppose, but you have eaten nothing since. 
Is that reasonable? I do not wish you to fall ill 
also. Martine has some broth. I have told her to 
make a light soup and to roast a chicken. Go down 
and eat a mouthful, only a mouthful, and I will 
remain here.” 

With the same patient gesture Clotilde again 
refused. At last she faltered : 

“Do not ask me, grandmother, I entreat you. I 
could not ; it would choke me.” 

She did not speak again, falling back into her 
former state of apathy. She did not sleep, how- 
ever, her wide-open eyes were fixed persistently on 
Pascal’s face. For hours she sat there, motionless, 
erect, rigid, as if her spirit were far away with the 
dead. At ten o’clock she heard a noise ; it was 
Martine bringing up the lamp. Toward eleven 
F£iicite, who was sitting watching in an armchair, 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


427 


seemed to grow restless, got up and went out of the 
room, and came back again. From this forth there 
was a continual coming and going as of impatient 
footsteps prowling around the young woman, who 
was still awake, her large eyes fixed motionless on 
Pascal. Twelve o’clock struck, and one persistent 
thought alone pierced her weary brain, like a nail, 
and prevented sleep — why had she obeyed him? If 
she had remained she would have revived him with 
her youth, and he would not have died. And it 
was not until a little before one that she felt this 
thought, too, grow confused and lose itself in a 
nightmare. And she fell into a heavy sleep, worn 
out with grief and fatigue. 

When Martine had announced to Mme. Rougon 
the unexpected death of her son Pascal, in the 
shock which she received there was as much of 
anger as of grief. What! her dying son had not 
wished to see her; he had made this servant swear 
not to inform her of his illness! This thought sent 
the blood coursing swiftly through her veins, as if 
the struggle between them, which had lasted during 
his whole life, was to be continued beyond the 
grave. Then, when after hastily dressing herself 
she had hurried to La Souleiade, the thought of the 
terrible envelopes, of all the manuscripts piled up in 
the press, had filled her with trembling rage. Now 
that Uncle Macquart and Aunt Dide were dead, she 
no longer feared what she called the abomination of 
the Tulettes; and even poor little Charles, in dying, 
had carried with him one of the most humiliating of 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


428 

the blots on the family. There remained only the 
envelopes, the abominable envelopes, to menace the 
glorious Rougon legend which she had spent her 
whole life in creating, which was the sole thought of 
her old age, the work to the triumph of which she 
had persistently devoted the last efforts of her wily 
and active brain. For long years she had watched 
these envelopes, never wearying, beginning the 
struggle over again, when he had thought her 
beaten, always alert and persistent. Ah ! if she 
could only succeed in obtaining possession of them 
and destroying them ! It would be the execrable 
past destroyed, effaced ; it would be the glory of 
her family, so hardly won, at last freed from all fear, 
at last shining untarnished, imposing its lie upon 
history. And she saw herself traversing, the three 
quarters of Plassans, saluted by everyone, bearing 
herself as proudly as a queen, mourning nobly for 
the fallen Empire. So that when Martine informed 
her that Clotilde had come, she quickened her steps 
as she approached La Souleiade, spurred by the fear 
of arriving too late. 

But as soon as she was installed in the house, 
F£licite at once regained her composure. There 
was no hurry, they had the whole night before 
them. She wished, however, to win over Martine 
without delay, and she knew well how to influence 
this simple creature, bound up in the doctrines of a 
narrow religion. Going down to the kitchen, then, 
to see the chicken roasting, she began by affecting 
to be heartbroken at the thought of her son dying 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


429 

without having made his peace with the Church. 
She questioned the servant, pressing her for particu- 
lars. But the latter shook her head disconsolately 
— no, no priest had come, monsieur had not even 
made the sign of the cross. She, only, had knelt 
down to say the prayers for the dying, which cer- 
tainly could not be enough for the salvation of a 
soul. And yet with what fervor had she prayed to 
the good God that monsieur might go straight to 
Paradise ! 

With her eyes fixed on the chicken turning on the 
spit, before a bright fire, Felicite resumed in a lower 
voice, with an absorbed air: 

“Ah, my poor girl, what will most prevent him 
from going to Paradise are the abominable papers 
which the unhappy man has left behind him up 
there in the press. I cannot understand why it is 
that lightning from heaven has not struck those 
papers before this and reduced them to ashes. If 
they are allowed to leave this house it will be ruin 
and disgrace and eternal perdition !” 

Martine listened, very pale. 

“Then madame thinks it would be a good work 
to destroy them, a work that would assure the 
repose of monsieur’s soul?’’ 

“Great God ! do I believe it ! Why, if I had 
those dreadful papers in my hands, I would throw 
every one of them into the fire. Oh, you would not 
need then to put on any more sticks; with the 
manuscripts upstairs alone you would have fuel 
enough to roast three chickens like that,’’ 


43 ° 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


The servant took a long spoon and began to baste 
the fowl. She, too, seemed now to reflect. 

“Only we haven’t got them. I even overheard 
some words on the subject, which I may repeat to 
madame. It was when mademoiselle went upstairs. 
Dr. Ramond spoke to her about the papers, asking 
her if she remembered some orders which she had 
received, before she went away, no doubt; and she 
answered that she remembered, that she was to 
keep the envelopes and to give him all the other 
manuscripts.” 

Felicite trembled ; she could not restrain a terrified 
movement. Already she saw the papers slipping 
out of her reach ; and it was not the envelopes only 
which she desired, but all the manuscripts, all that 
unknown, suspicious, and secret work, from which 
nothing but scandal could come, according to the ob- 
tuse and excitable mind of the proud old bourgeoise. 

“But we must act!” she cried, “act immediately, 
this very night! To-morrow it may be too late.” 

“I know where the key of the press is,” answered 
Martine in a low voice. “The doctor told made- 
moiselle.” 

Felicity immediately pricked up her ears. 

"The key; where is it?” 

"Under the pillow, under monsieur’s head.” 

In spite of the bright blaze of the fire of vine 
branches the air seemed to grow suddenly chill, and 
the two old women were silent. The only sound to 
be heard was the drip of the chicken juice, falling 
into the pan. 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


43 * 

But after Mme. Rougon had eaten a hasty and 
solitary dinner she went up-stairs again with Martine. 
Without another word being spoken they under- 
stood each other, it was decided that they would 
use all possible means to obtain possession of the 
papers before daybreak. The simplest was to take 
the key from under the pillow. Clotilde would no 
doubt at last fall asleep — she seemed too exhausted 
not to succumb to fatigue. All they had to do was 
to wait. They set themselves to watch, then, going 
back and forth on tiptoe between the study and the 
bedroom, waiting for' the moment when the young 
woman’s large motionless eyes should close in sleep. 
One of them would go to see, while the other waited 
impatiently in the study, where a lamp burned dully 
on the table. This was repeated every fifteen min- 
utes until midnight. The fathomless eyes, full of 
gloom and of an immense despair, did not close. 
A little before midnight Felicite installed herself in 
an armchair at the foot of the bed, resolved not to 
leave the spot until her granddaughter should have 
fallen asleep. From this forth she did not take her 
eyes off Clotilde, and it filled her with a sort of fear 
to remark that the girl scarcely moved her eyelids, 
looking with that inconsolable fixity which defies 
sleep. Then she herself began to feel sleep stealing 
over her. Exasperated, trembling with nervous 
impatience, she could remain where she was no 
longer. And she went to rejoin the servant, who 
was watching in the study. 

“It is useless; she will not sleep,” she said in a 


43 2 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


stifled and trembling voice. “We must find some 
other way.” 

It had indeed occurred to her to break open the 
press. 

But the old oaken boards were strong, the old 
iron held firmly. How could they break the lock — 
not to speak of the noise they would make and 
which would certainly be heard in the adjoining 
room? 

She stood before the thick doors, however, and 
felt them with her fingers, seeking some weak 
spot. 

“If I only had an instrument,” she said. 

Martine, less eager, interrupted her, objecting: 

“Oh, no, no, madame ! We might be surprised ! 
Wait, I will go again and see if mademoiselle is 
asleep now.” 

She went to the bedroom on tiptoe and returned 
immediately, saying: 

“Yes, she is asleep. Her eyes are closed, and she 
does not stir.” 

Then both went to look at her, holding their 
breath and walking with the utmost caution, so that 
the boards might not creak. Clotilde had indeed 
just fallen asleep; and her stupor seemed so pro- 
found that the two old women grew bold. They 
feared, however, that they might touch and waken 
her, for her chair stood close beside the bed. And 
then, to put one’s hand under a dead man’s pillow 
to rob him was a terrible and sacrilegious act, the 
thought of which filled them with terror. Might it 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


433 


not disturb his repose? Might he not move at the 
shock? The thought made them turn pale. 

Felicite had advanced with outstretched hand. 
But she drew back, stammering : 

“I am too short. You try, Martine.” 

The servant in her turn approached the bed. But 
she was seized with such a fit of trembling that she 
was obliged to retreat lest she should fall. 

“No, no, I cannot!” she said. “It seems to me 
that monsieur is going to open his eyes.” 

And trembling and .awe-struck, they remained an 
instant longer in the lugubrious chamber full of the 
silence and the majesty of death, facing Pascal, 
motionless forever, and Clotilde, overwhelmed by 
the grief of her widowhood. Perhaps they saw, 
glorifying that mute head, guarding its work with 
all its weight, the nobility of a life spent in honor- 
able labor. The flame of the tapers burned 
palely. A sacred awe filled the air, driving them 
from the chamber. 

Felicite, who was so brave, who had never in her 
life flinched from anything, not even from blood- 
shed, fled as if she was pursued, saying: 

“Come, come, Martine, we will find some other 
way; we will go look for an instrument.” 

In the study they drew a breath of relief. Feli- 
cite looked in vain among the papers on Pascal’s work 
table for the genealogical tree, which she knew was 
usually there. She would so gladly have begun her 
work of destruction with this. It was there, but in 
her feverish excitement she did not perceive it, 


434 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


Her desire drew her back again to the press, and 
she stood before it, measuring it and examining it 
with eager and covetous look. In spite of her short 
stature, in spite of her eighty-odd years, she dis- 
played an activity and an energy that were truly 
extraordinary. 

“Ah!” she repeated, “if I only had an instru- 
ment !” 

And she again sought the crevice in the colossus, 
the crack into which she might introduce her fingers, 
to break it open. She imagined plans of assault, 
she thought of using force, and then she fell back 
on stratagem, on some piece of treachery which 
would open to her the doors, merely by breathing 
upon them. 

Suddenly her glance kindled ; she had discovered 
the means. 

“Tell me, Martine; there is a hook fastening one 
of the doors, is there not?” 

“Yes, madame, it catches in a ring above the 
middle shelf. See, it is about the height of this 
molding.” 

Felicite made a triumphant gesture. 

“Have you a gimlet, a large gimlet? Give me a 
gimlet !” 

Martine went down into her kitchen and brought 
back the tool that had been asked. 

“In that way, you see, we shall make no noise,” 
resumed the old woman, setting herself to her task. 

With a strength which one would not have sus- 
pected in her little hands, withered by age, she 


DOCTOR PA SCAT. 


435 


inserted the gimlet, and made a hole at the height 
indicated by the servant. But it was too low; she 
felt the point, after a time, entering the shelf. A 
second attempt brought the instrument in direct 
contact with the iron hook. This time the hole was 
too near. And she multiplied the holes to right 
and left, until finally she succeeded in pushing the 
hook out of the ring. The bolt of the lock slipped, 
and both doors opened. 

“At last!” cried Fddicite, beside herself. 

Then she remained motionless for a moment, her 
ear turned uneasily toward the bedroom, fearing 
that she had wakened Clotilde. But silence reigned 
throughout the dark and sleeping house. There 
came from the bedroom only the august peace of 
death; she heard nothing but the clear vibration of 
the clock; Clotilde fell asleep near one. And the 
press yawned wide open, displaying the papers with 
which it overflowed, heaped up on its three 
shelves. Then she threw herself upon it, and the 
work of destruction began, in the midst of the 
sacred obscurity of the infinite repose of this 
funereal vigil. 

“At last!” she repeated, in a low voice, “after 
thirty years of waiting. Let us hurry, let us hurry. 
Martine, help me !” 

She had already drawn forward the high chair of 
the desk, and mounted on it at a bound, to take 
down, first of all, the papers on the top shelf, for she 
remembered that the envelopes were there. But 
she was surprised not to see the thick blue paper 


43^ 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


wrappers; there was nothing there but bulky manu- 
scripts, the doctor’s completed but unpublished 
works, works of inestimable value, all his researches, 
all his discoveries, the monument of his future fame, 
which he had left in Ramond’s charge. Doubtless, 
some days before his death, thinking that only the 
envelopes were in danger, and that no one in the world 
would be so daring as to destroy his other works, 
he had begun to classify and arrange the papers 
anew, and removed the envelopes out of sight. 

“Ah, so much the worse!” murmured Felicite; 
“let us begin anywhere; there are so many of them 
that if we wish to get through we must hurry. 
While I am up here, let us clear these away forever. 
Here, catch, Martine!” 

And she emptied the shelf, throwing the manu- 
scripts, one by one, into the arms of the servant, 
who laid them on the table with as little noise as 
possible. Soon the whole heap was on it, and 
Felicity sprang down from the chair. 

“To the fire ! to the fire ! We shall lay our hands 
on the others too, by and by, on those I am looking 
for. These can go into it, meantime. It will be a 
good riddance, at any rate, a fine clearance, yes, 
indeed! To the fire, to the fire with them all, even 
to the smallest scrap of paper, even to the most 
illegible scrawl, if we wish to be certain of destroy- 
ing the contamination of evil.” 

She herself, fanatical and fierce, in her hatred of 
the truth, in her eagerness to destroy the testimony 
of science, tore off the first page of one of the 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


437 


manuscripts, lighted it at the lamp, and then threw 
this burning brand into the great fireplace, in which 
there liad not been a fire for perhaps twenty years, 
and she fed the fire, continuing to throw on it the 
rest of the manuscript, piece by piece. The servant, 
as determined as herself, came to her assistance, 
taking another enormous notebook, which she tore 
up leaf by leaf. From this forth the fire did not 
cease to burn, filling the wide fireplace with a bright 
blaze, with tongues of flame that seemed to die away 
from time to time, only to burn up more brightly 
than ever when fresh fuel fed them. The fire grew 
larger, the heap of ashes rose higher and higher — a 
thick bed of blackened leaves along which ran mil- 
lions of sparks. But it was a long, a never-ending 
task; for when several pages were thrown on at a 
time, they would not burn ; it was necessary to move 
them and turn them over with the tongs ; the best 
way was to stir them up and then wait until they 
were in a blaze, before adding more. The women 
soon grew skillful at their task, and the work pro- 
gressed at a rapid rate. 

In her haste to get a fresh armful of papers F£li- 
cite stumbled against a chair. 

“Oh, madame, take care,” said Martine. ‘‘Some- 
one might come !” 

“Come; who should come? Clotilde? She is too 
sound asleep, poor girl. And even if anyone should 
come, once it is finished, I don’t care; I won’t hide 
myself, you may be sure; I shall leave the empty 
press standing wide open ; I shall say aloud that it 


43^ 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


is I who have purified the house. When there is 
not a line of writing left, ah, good heavens, I shall 
laugh at everything else !” 

For almost two hours the fireplace blazed. They 
went back to the press and emptied the two other 
shelves, and now there remained only the bottom, 
which was heaped with a confusion of papers. 
Little by little, intoxicated by the heat of the bon- 
fire, out of breath and perspiring, they gave them- 
selves up to the savage joy of destruction. They 
stooped down, they blackened their hands, pushing 
in the partially consumed fragments, with gestures 
so violent, so feverishly excited, that their gray locks 
fell in disorder over their shoulders. It was like a 
dance of witches, feeding a hellish fire for some 
abominable act — the martyrdom of a saint, the 
burning of written thought in the public square; a 
whole world of truth and hope destroyed. And the 
blaze of this fire, which at moments made the 
flame of the lamp grow pale, lighted up the vast 
apartment, and made the gigantic shadows of the 
two women dance upon the ceiling. 

But as she was emptying the bottom of the press, 
after having burned, handful by handful, the papers 
with which it had been filled, Felicity uttered a 
stifled cry of triumph. 

“Ah, here they are! To the fire! to the fire!” 

She had at last come upon the envelopes. Far 
back, behind the rampart formed by the notes, the 
doctor had hidden the blue paper wrappers. And 
then began a mad work of havoc, a fury of destruc- 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


439 


tion ; the envelopes were gathered up in handfuls 
and thrown into the flames, filling the fireplace with 
a roar like that of a conflagration. 

“They are burning, they are burning! They 
are burning at last ! Here is another, Martine, 
here is another. Ah, what a fire,- what a glorious 
fire !” 

But the servant was becoming uneasy. 

'‘Take care, madame, you are going to set the 
house on fire. Don’t you hear that roar?” 

‘‘Ah! what does that matter? Let it all burn. 
They are burning, they are burning; what a fine 
sight ! Three more, two more, and, see, now the 
last is burning!” 

She laughed with delight, beside herself, terrible 
to see, when some fragment of lighted soot fell 
down. The roar was becoming more and more 
fierce ; the chimney, which was never swept, had 
caught fire. This seemed to excite her still more, 
while the servant, losing her head, began to scream 
and run about the room. 

Clotilde slept beside the dead Pascal, in the 
supreme calm of the bedroom, unbroken save by 
the light vibration of the clock striking the hours. 
The tapers burned with a tall, still flame, the air 
was motionless. And yet, in the midst of her 
heavy, dreamless sleep, she heard, as in a nightmare, 
a tumult, an ever-increasing rush and roar. And 
when she opened her eyes she could not at first 
understand. Where was she? Why this enormous 
weight that crushed her heart? She came back to 


A AO DOCTOR RASCAL. 

reality with a start of terror — she saw Pascal, she 
heard Martine’s cries in the adjoining room, and she 
rushed out, in alarm, to learn their cause. 

But at the threshold Clotilde took in the whole 
scene with cruel distinctness — the press wide open 
and completely empty; Martine maddened by her 
fear of fire; F£licite radiant, pushing into the flames 
with her foot the last fragments of the envelopes. 
Smoke and flying soot filled the study, where the 
roaring of the fire sounded like the hoarse gasping 
of a murdered man — the fierce roar which she had 
just heard in her sleep. 

And the cry which sprang from her lips was the 
same cry that Pascal himself had uttered on the 
night of the storm, when he surprised her in the act 
of stealing his papers. 

“Thieves! assassins!” 

She precipitated herself toward the fireplace, and, 
in spite of the dreadful roaring of the flames, in spite 
of the falling pieces of soot, at the risk of setting 
her hair on fire, and of burning her hands, she gath- 
ered up the leaves which remained yet unconsumed 
and bravely extinguished them, pressing them 
against her. But all this was very little, only some 
cUbris; not a complete page remained, not even a few 
fragments of the colossal labor, of the vast and 
patient work of a lifetime, which the fire had 
destroyed there in two hours. And with growing 
anger, in a burst of furious indignation, she cried : 

“You are thieves, assassins! It is a wicked mur- 
der which you have just committed. You have 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


441 


profaned death, you have slain the mind, you have 
slain genius.” 

Old Mine. Rougon did not quail. She advanced, 
on the contrary, feeling no remorse, her head erect, 
defending the sentence of destruction pronounced 
and executed by her. 

“It is to me you are speaking, to your grand- 
mother. Is there nothing then that you respect? 
I have done what I ought to have done, what you 
yourself wished to do with us before.” 

‘‘Before, you had made me mad; but since then I 
have lived, I have loved, I have understood, and it 
is life that I defend. Even if it be terrible and 
cruel, the truth ought to be respected. Besides, it 
was a sacred legacy bequeathed to my protection, 
the last thoughts of a dead man, all that remained 
of a great mind, and which I should have obliged 
everyone to respect. Yes, you are my grandmother ; 
I am well aware of it, and it is as if you had just 
burned your son !” 

‘‘Burn Pascal because I have burned his papers!” 
cried Felicite. ‘‘Do you not know that I would 
have burned the town to save the honor of our 
family !” 

She continued to advance, belligerent and victori- 
ous; and Clotilde, who had laid on the table the 
blackened fragments rescued by her from the burning 
flames, protected them with her body, fearing that her 
grandmother would throw them back again into the 
fire. She regarded the two women scornfully; she 
did not even trouble herself about the fire in the 


44 * DOCTOR RASCAL. 

fireplace, which fortunately went out of itself, while 
Martine extinguished with the shovel the burn- 
ing soot and the last flames of the smoldering 
ashes. 

“You know very well, however,” continued the 
old woman, whose little figure seemed to grow 
taller, “that I have had only one ambition, one 
passion in life — to see our family rich and power- 
ful. I have fought, I have watched all my life, I 
have lived as long as I have done, only to put 
down ugly stories and to leave our name a glorious 
one. Yes, I have never despaired ; I have never 
laid down my arms; I have been continually on the 
alert, ready to profit by the slightest circumstance. 
And all I desired to do I have done, because I have 
known how to wait.” 

And she waved her hand toward the empty press 
and the fireplace, where the last sparks were dying 
out. 

“Now it is ended, our honor is safe; those abom- 
inable papers will no longer accuse us, and I shall 
leave behind me nothing to be feared. The Rou- 
gons have triumphed.” 

Clotilde, in a frenzy of grief, raised her arm, as if 
to drive her out of the room. But she left it of her 
own accord, and went down to the kitchen to wash 
her blackened hands and to fasten up her hair. 
The servant was about to follow her when, turning 
her head, she saw her young mistress’ gesture, and 
she returned. 

“Oh ! as for me, mademoiselle, I will go away the 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 443 

day after to-morrow, when monsieur shall be in the 
cemetery.” 

There was a moment’s silence. 

“But I am not sending you away, Martine. I 
know well that it is not you who are most to blame. 
You have lived in this house for thirty years. 
Remain, remain with me.” 

The old maid shook her gray head, looking very 
pale and tired. 

“No, I have served monsieur; I will serve no one 
after monsieur.” 

‘‘But I!” 

‘‘You, no !” 

Clotilde looked embarrassed, hesitated a moment, 
and remained silent. But Martine understood; she 
too seemed to reflect for an instant, and then she 
said distinctly: 

‘‘I know what you would say, but — no!” 

And she went on to settle her account, arranging 
the affair like a practical woman who knew the 
value of money. 

‘‘Since I have the means, I will go and live quietly 
on my income somewhere. As for you, mademoi- 
selle, I can leave you, for you are not poor. M. Ra- 
mond will explain to you to-morrow how an income 
of four thousand francs was saved for you out of the 
money at the notary’s. Meantime, here is the key 
of the desk, where you will find the five thousand 
francs which monsieur left there. Oh ! I know that 
there will be no trouble between us. Monsieur did 
not pay me for the last three months; I have 


444 


DOCTOR PASCAL, 


papers from him which prove it. In addition, I 
advanced lately almost two hundred francs out of 
my own pocket, without his knowing where the 
money came from. It is all written down; I am 
not at all uneasy ; mademoiselle will not wrong me by 
a centime. The day after to-morrow, when mon- 
sieur is no longer here, I will go away.” 

Then she went down to the kitchen, and Clotilde, 
in spite of the fanaticism of this woman, which had 
made her take part in a crime, felt inexpressibly sad 
at this desertion. When she was gathering up the 
fragments of the papers, however, before returning 
to the bedroom, she had a thrill of joy, on suddenly 
seeing the genealogical tree, which the two women 
had not perceived, lying unharmed on the table. It 
was the only entire document saved from the wreck. 
She took it and locked it, with the half-consumed 
fragments, in the bureau in the bedroom. 

But when she found herself again in this august 
chamber a great emotion took possession of her. 
What supreme calm, what immortal peace, reigned 
here, beside the savage destruction that had filled 
the adjoining room with smoke and ashes. A 
sacred serenity pervaded the obscurity; the two 
tapers burned with a pure, still, unwavering flame. 
Then she saw that Pascal’s face, framed in his flow- 
ing white hair and beard, had become very white. 
He slept with the light falling upon him, surrounded 
by a halo, supremely beautiful. She bent down, 
kissed him again, felt on her lips the cold of the 
marble face, with its closed eyelids, dreaming its 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


445 


dream of eternity. Her grief at not being able to 
save the work which he had left to her care was so 
overpowering that she fell on her knees and burst 
into a passion of sobs. Genius had been violated ; 
it seemed to her as if the world was about to be 
destroyed in this savage destruction of a whole life 
of labor. 


XIV. 


In the study Clotilde was buttoning her dress, 
holding her child, whom she had been nursing, still 
in her lap. It was after lunch, about three o’clock 
on a hot sunny day at the end of August, and 
through the crevices of the carefully closed shutters 
only a few scattered sunbeams entered, piercing the 
drowsy and warm obscurity of the vast apartment. 
The rest and peace of the Sunday seemed to enter 
and diffuse itself in the room with the last sounds of 
the distant vesper bell. Profound silence reigned in 
the empty house, in which the mother and child 
were to remain alone until dinner time, the servant 
having asked permission to go see a cousin in the 
faubourg. 

For an instant Clotilde looked at her child, now a 
big boy of three months. • She had been wearing 
mourning for Pascal for almost ten months — a long 
and simple black gown, in which she looked divinely 
beautiful, with her tall, slender figure and her sad, 
youthful face surrounded by its aureole of fair hair. 
And although she could not smile, it filled her with 
sweet emotion to see the beautiful child, so plump 
and rosy, with his mouth still wet with milk, whose 
gaze had been arrested by the sunbeam full of danc- 
ing motes. His eyes were fixed wonderingly on the 

446 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


447 


golden brightness, the dazzling miracle of light. 
Then sleep came over him, and he let his little, 
round, bare head, covered thinly with fair hair, fall 
back on his mother’s arm. 

Clotilde rose softly and laid him in the cradle, 
which stood beside the table. She remained leaning 
over him for an instant to assure herself that he was 
asleep ; then she let down the curtain in the already 
darkened room. Then she busied herself with sup- 
ple and noiseless movements, walking with so light a 
step that she scarcely touched the floor, in putting 
away some linen which was on the table. Twice 
she crossed the room in search of a little missing 
sock. She was very silent, very gentle, and very 
active. And now, in the solitude of the house, she 
fell into a reverie and all the past year arose before 
her. 

First, after the dreadful shock of the funeral, 
came the departure of Martine, who had obsti- 
nately kept to her determination of going away at 
once, not even remaining for the customary week, 
bringing to replace her the young cousin of a baker 
in the neighborhood — a stout brunette, who fortu- 
nately proved very neat and faithful. Martine her- 
self lived at Sainte-Marthe, in a retired corner, so 
penuriously that she must be still saving even out of 
her small income. She was not known to. have any 
heir. Who, then, would profit by this miserliness ? 
In ten months she had not once set foot in La 
Souleiade — monsieur was not there, and she had not 
even the desire to see monsieur’s son. 


44§ 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


Then in Clotilde’s reverie rose the figure of her 
grandmother Felicite. The latter came to see her 
from time to time with the condescension of a pow- 
erful relation who is liberal minded enough to par^ 
don all faults when they have been cruelly expiated. 
She would come unexpectedly, kiss the child, moral- 
ize, and give advice, and the young mother had 
adopted toward her the respectful attitude which 
Pascal had always maintained. Felicite was now 
wholly absorbed in her triumph. She was at last 
about to realize a plan that she had long cherished 
and maturely deliberated, which would perpetuate by 
an imperishable monument the untarnished glory of 
the family. The plan was to devote her fortune, 
which had become considerable, to the construction 
and endowment of an asylum for the aged, to be 
called Rougon Asylum. She had already bought 
the ground, a part of the old mall outside the town, 
near the railway station ; and precisely on this Sun- 
day, at five o’clock, when the heat should have 
abated a little, the first stone was to be laid, a really 
solemn ceremony, to be honored by the presence of 
all the authorities, and of which she was to be the 
acknowledged queen, before a vast concourse of 
people. 

Clotilde felt, besides, some gratitude toward her 
grandmother, who had shown perfect disinterested- 
ness on the occasion of the opening of Pascal’s will. 
The latter had constituted the young woman his 
sole legatee ; and the mother, who had a right to a 
fourth part, after declaring her intention to respect 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


449 


her son’s wishes, had simply renounced her right to 
the succession. She wished, indeed, to disinherit 
all her family, bequeathing to them glory only, by 
employing her large fortune in the erection of this 
asylum, which was to carry down to future ages the 
revered and glorious name of the Rougons ; and 
after having, for more than half a century, so eagerly 
striven to acquire money, she now disdained it, 
moved by a higher and purer ambition. And Clo- 
tilde, thanks to this liberality, had no uneasiness 
regarding the future — the four thousand francs 
income would be sufficient for her and her child. 
She would bring him up to be a man. She had 
sunk the five thousand francs that she had found in 
the desk in an annuity for him ; and she owned, 
besides, La Souleiade, which everybody advised her 
to sell. True, it cost but little to keep it up, but 
what a sad and solitary life she would lead in that 
great deserted house, much too large for her, where 
she would be lost. Thus far, however, she had not 
been able to make up her mind to leave it. Perhaps 
she would never be able to do so. 

Ah, this La Souleiade ! all her love, all her life, 
all her memories were centered in it. It seemed to 
her at times as if Pascal were living here still, for 
she had changed nothing of their former manner of 
living. The furniture remained in the same places, 
the hours were the same, the habits the same. The 
only change she had made was to lock his room, 
into which only she went, as into a sanctuary, to 
weep when she felt her heart too heavy. And 


45 ° 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


although indeed she felt very lonely, very lost, at . 
each meal in the bright dining room downstairs, in 
fancy she heard there the echoes of their laughter, 
she recalled the healthy appetite of her youth ; 
when they two had eaten and drunk so gayly, rejoic- 
ing in their existence. And the garden, too, the 
whole place was bound up with the most intimate 
fibers of her being, for she could not take a step in 
it that their united images did not appear before her 
— on the terrace ; in the slender shadow of the great 
secular cypresses, where they had so often contem- 
plated the valley of the Viorne, closed in by the 
ridges of the Seille and the parched hills of Sainte- 
Marthe ; the stone steps among the puny olive and 
almond trees, which they had so often challenged 
each other to run up in a trial of speed, like boys 
just let loose from school; and there was the pine 
grove, too, the warm, embalsamed shade, where the 
needles crackled under their feet ; the vast threshing 
yard, carpeted with soft grass, where they could see 
the whole sky at night, when the stars were coming 
out ; and above all, there were the giant plane trees, 
whose delightful shade they had enjoyed every day 
in summer, listening to the soothing song of the 
fountain, the crystal clear song which it had sung 
for centuries. Even to the old stones of the house, 
even to the earth of the grounds, there was not an 
atom at La Souleiade in which she did not feel a 
little of their blood warmly throbbing, with which 
she did not feel a little of their life diffused and 
mingled. 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


451 


But she preferred to spend her days in the work- 
room, and here it was that she lived over again her 
best hours. There was nothing new in it but the 
cradle. The doctor’s table was in its place before 
the window to the left — she could fancy him coming 
in and sitting down at it, for his chair had not even 
been moved. On the long table in the center, 
among the old heap of books and papers, there was 
nothing new but the cheerful note of the little baby 
linen, which she was looking over. The bookcases 
displayed the same rows of volumes ; the large oaken 
press seemed to guard within its sides the same 
treasure, securely shut in. Under the smoky ceil- 
ing the room was still redolent of work, with its confu- 
sion of chairs, the pleasant disorder of this common 
workroom, filled with the caprices of the girl and the 
researches of the scientist. But what most moved 
her to-day was the sight of her old pastels hanging 
against the wall, the copies which she had made of 
living flowers, scrupulously exact copies, and of 
dream flowers of an imaginary world, whither her 
wild fancy sometimes carried her. 

Clotilde had just finished arranging the little gar- 
ments on the table when, lifting her eyes, she per- 
ceived before her the pastel of old King David, with 
his hand resting on the shoulder of Abishag the 
young Shunammite. And she, who now never smiled, 
felt her face flush with a thrill of tender and pleasing 
emotion. How they had loved each other, how they 
had dreamed of an eternity of love the day on 
which she had amused herself painting this proud 


45 2 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


and loving allegory! The old king, sumptuously 
clad in a robe hanging in straight folds, heavy with 
precious stones, wore the royal bandeau on his 
snowy locks ; but she was more sumptuous still, 
with only her tall slender figure, her delicate round 
throat, and her supple arms, divinely graceful. Now 
he was gone, he was sleeping under the ground, 
while she, her pure and triumphant beauty concealed 
by her black robes, had only her child to express 
the love she had given him before the assembled 
people, in the full light of day. 

Then Clotilde sat down beside the cradle. The 
slender sunbeams lengthened, crossing the room 
from end to end, the heat of the warm afternoon 
grew oppressive in the drowsy obscurity made by 
the closed shutters, and the silence of the house 
seemed more profound than before. She set apart 
some little waists, she sewed on some tapes with 
slow-moving needle, and gradually she fell into a 
reverie in the warm deep peacefulness of the room, 
in the midst of the glowing heat outside. Her 
thoughts first turned to her pastels, the exact copies 
and the fantastic dream flowers ; she said to herself 
now that all her dual nature was to be found in that 
passion for truth, which had at times kept her 
a whole day before a flower in order to copy it with 
exactness, and in her need of the spiritual, which at 
other times took her outside the real, and carried her 
in wild dreams to the paradise of flowers such as 
had never grown on earth. She had always been 
thus. She felt that she was in reality the same 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


453 


to-day as she had been yesterday, in the midst of 
the flow of new life which ceaselessly transformed 
her. And then she thought of Pascal, full of grati- 
tude that he had made her what she was. In days 
past when, a little girl, he had removed her from 
her execrable surroundings and taken her home with 
him, he had undoubtedly followed the impulses of 
his good heart, but he had also undoubtedly desired 
to try an experiment with her, to see how she would 
grow up in the different environment, in an atmos- 
phere of truthfulness and affection. This had 
always been an idea of his. It was an old theory of 
his which he would have liked to test on a large 
scale : culture through environment, complete re- 
generation even, the improvement, the salvation of 
the individual, physically as well as morally. She 
owed to him undoubtedly the best part of her 
nature ; she guessed how fanciful and violent she 
might have become, while he had made her only 
enthusiastic and courageous. 

In this retrospection she was clearly conscious of 
the gradual change that had taken place within her. 
Pascal had corrected her heredity, and she lived 
over again the slow evolution, the struggle between 
the fantastic and the real in her. It had begun with 
her outbursts of anger as a child, a ferment of 
rebellion, a want of mental balance that had caused 
her to indulge in the most hurtful reveries. Then 
came her fits of extreme devotion, the need of 
illusion and falsehood, of immediate happiness in 
the thought that the inequalities and injustices of 


454 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


this wicked world would be compensated by the 
eternal joys of a future paradise. This was the 
epoch of her struggles with Pascal, of the torture 
which she had caused him, planning to destroy the 
work of his genius. And at this point her nature 
had changed ; she had acknowledged him for her 
master. He had conquered her by the terrible les- 
son of life which he had given her on the night of 
the storm. Then, environment had acted upon her, 
evolution had proceeded rapidly, and she had ended 
by becoming a well-balanced and rational woman, 
willing to live life as it ought to be lived, satisfied 
with doing her work in the hope that the sum of 
the common labor would one day free the world 
from evil and pain. She had loved, she was a 
mother now, and she understood. 

Suddenly she remembered the night which they 
had spent in the threshing yard. She could still 
hear her lamentation under the stars — the cruelty of 
nature, the inefficacy of science, the wickedness of 
humanity, and the need she felt of losing herself in 
God, in the Unknown. Happiness consisted in self- 
renunciation. Then she heard him repeat his creed 
— the progress of reason through science, truths 
acquired slowly and forever the only possible good, 
the belief that the sum of these truths, always aug 
menting, would finally confer upon man incalculable 
power and peace, if not happiness. All was summed 
up in his ardent faith in life. As he expressed it, it 
was necessary to march with life, which marched 
always. No halt was to be expected, no peace in 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


455 


immobility and renunciation, no consolation in turn- 
ing back. One must keep a steadfast soul, the only 
ambition to perform one’s work, modestly looking 
for no other reward of life than to have lived it 
bravely, accomplishing the task which it imposes. 
Evil was only an accident not yet explained, human- 
ity appearing from a great height like an immense 
wheel in action, working ceaselessly for the future. 
Why should the workman who disappeared, having 
finished his day’s work, abuse the work because he 
could neither see nor know its end ? Even if it were 
to have no end why should he not enjoy the delight 
of action, the exhilarating air of the march, the 
sweetness of sleep after the fatigue of a long and 
busy day? The children would carry on the task of 
the parents; they were born and cherished only for 
this, for the task of life which is transmitted to them, 
which they in their turn will transmit to others. All 
that remained, then, was to be courageously resigned 
to the grand common labor, without the rebellion 
of the ego, which demands personal happiness, per- 
fect and complete. 

She questioned herself, and she found that she did 
not experience that anguish which had filled her for- 
merly at the thought of what was to follow death. 
This anxiety about the Beyond no longer haunted 
her until it became a torture. Formerly she would 
have liked to wrest by force from heaven the secrets 
of destiny. It had been a source of infinite grief to 
her not to know why she existed. Why are we 
born ? What do we come on earth to do? What is 


45 6 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


the meaning of this execrable existence, without 
equality, without justice, which seemed to her like a 
fevered dream? Now her terror was calmed; she 
could think of these things courageously. Perhaps 
it was her child, the continuation of herself, which 
now concealed from her the horror of her end. But 
her regular life contributed also to this, the thought 
that it was necessary to live for the effort of living, 
and that the only peace possible in this world was in 
the joy of the accomplishment of this effort. She 
repeated to herself a remark of the doctor, who 
would often say when he saw a peasant returning 
home with a contented look after his day’s work : 
“ There is a man whom anxiety about the Beyond 
will not prevent from sleeping.” He meant to 
say that this anxiety troubles and perverts only 
excitable and idle brains. If all performed their 
healthful task, all would sleep peacefully at night. 
She herself had felt the beneficent power of work in 
the midst of her sufferings and her grief. Since he 
had taught her to employ every one of her hours ; 
since she had been a mother, especially, occupied 
constantly with her child, she no longer felt a chill 
of horror when she thought of the Unknown. She 
put aside without an effort disquieting reveries ; and 
if she still felt an occasional fear, if some of her 
daily griefs made her sick at heart, she found com- 
fort and unfailing strength in the thought that her 
child was this day a day older, that he would be 
another day older on the morrow, that day by day, 
page by page, his work of life was being accom- 


DOCTOR RASCAL . 


457 


plished. This consoled her delightfully for all her 
miseries. She had a duty, an object, and she felt in 
her happy serenity that she was doing surely what 
she had been sent here to do. 

Yet, even at this very moment she knew that the 
mystic was not entirely dead within her. In the 
midst of the profound silence she heard a slight 
noise, and she raised her head. Who was the divine 
mediator that had passed? Perhaps the beloved 
dead for whom she mourned, and whose presence 
near her she fancied she could divine. There must 
always be in her something of the childlike believer 
she had always been, curious about the Unknown, 
having an instinctive longing for the mysterious. 
She accounted to herself for this longing, she even 
explained it scientifically. However far science may 
extend the limits of human knowledge, there is un- 
undoubtedly a point which it cannot pass ; and it 
was here precisely that Pascal placed the only inter- 
est in life — in the effort which we ceaselessly make 
to know more — there was only one reasonable mean- 
ing in life, this continual conquest of the unknown. 
Therefore, she admitted the existence of undiscov- 
ered forces surrounding the world, an immense and 
obscure domain, ten times larger than the domain 
already won, an infinite and unexplored realm 
through which future humanity would endlessly 
ascend. Here, indeed, was a field vast enough for 
the imagination to lose itself in. In her hours of 
reverie she satisfied in it the imperious need which 
man seems to have for the spiritual, a need of escap- 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


45 8 

in g from the visible world, of interrogating the 
Unknown, of satisfying in it the dream of absolute 
justice and of future happiness. All that remained 
of her former torture, her last mystic transports, 
were there appeased. She satisfied there that hun- 
ger for consoling illusions which suffering humanity 
must satisfy in order to live. But in her all was 
happily balanced. At this crisis, in an epoch over- 
burdened with science, disquieted at the ruins it has 
made, and seized with fright in the face of the new 
century, wildly desiring to stop and to return to the 
past, Clotilde kept the happy mean ; in her the pas- 
sion for truth was broadened by her eagerness to 
penetrate the Unknown. If sectarian scientists shut 
out the horizon to keep strictly to the phenomenon, 
it was permitted to her, a good, simple creature, to 
reserve the part that she did not know, that she 
would never know. And if Pascal’s creed was the 
logical deduction from the whole work, the eternal 
question of the Beyond, which she still continued to 
put to heaven, reopened the door of the infinite to 
humanity marching ever onward. Since we must 
always learn, while resigning ourselves never to 
know all, was it not to will action, life itself, to re^ 
serve the Unknown — an eternal doubt and an eternal 
hope ? 

Another sound, as of a wing passing, the light 
touch of a kiss upon her hair, this time made her 
smile. He was surely here ; and her whole being 
went out toward him, in the great flood of tenderness 
with which her heart overflowed. How kind and 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


459 


cheerful he was, and what a love for others under- 
lay his passionate love of life ! Perhaps he, too, 
had been only a dreamer, for he had dreamed the 
most beautiful of dreams, the final belief in a. better 
world, when science should have bestowed incalcu- 
lable power upon man — to accept everything, to 
turn everything to our happiness, to know every- 
thing and to foresee everything, to make nature 
our servant, to live in the tranquillity, of intelligence 
satisfied. Meantime faith in life, voluntary and reg 
ular labor, would suffice for health. Evil was only the 
unexplained side of things ; suffering would one 
day be assuredly utilized. And regarding from 
above the enormous labor of the world, seeing the 
sum total of humanity, good and bad — admirable, in 
spite of everything, for their courage and their in- 
dustry — she now regarded all mankind as united in a 
common brotherhood, she now felt only boundless 
indulgence, an infinite pity, and an ardent charity. 
Love, like the sun, bathes the earth, and goodness 
is the great river at which all hearts drink. 

Clotilde had been plying her needle for two hours, 
with the same regular movement, while her thoughts 
wandered away in the profound silence. But the 
tapes were sewed on the little waists, she had even 
marked some new wrappers, which she had bought 
the day before. And, her sewing finished, she rose 
to put the linen away. Outside the sun was declin 
ing, and only slender and oblique sunbeams entered 
through the crevices of the shutters. She could not 
see clearly, and she opened one of the shutters, then 


460 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


she forgot herself fora moment, at the sight of the vast 
horizon suddenly unrolled before her. The intense 
heat had abated, a delicious breeze was blowing, and 
the sky was of a cloudless blue. To the left could 
be distinguished even the smallest clumps of pines, 
among the blood-colored ravines of the rocks of the 
Seille, while to the right, beyond the hills of Sainte- 
Marthe, the valley of the Viorne stretched away in 
the golden dust of the setting sun. She looked for 
a moment at the tower of St. Saturnin, all golden 
also, dominating the rose-colored town ; and she was 
about to leave the window when she saw a sight 
that drew her back and kept her there, leaning on 
her elbow for a long time still. 

Beyond the railroad a multitude of people were 
crowded together on the old mall. Clotilde at once 
remembered the ceremony. She knew that her 
grandmother Felicite was going to lay the first stone 
of the Rougon Asylum, the triumphant monument 
destined to carry down to future ages the glory of 
the family. Vast preparations had been going on 
for a week past. There was talk of a silver hod and 
trowel, which the old lady was to use herself, de- 
termined to figure, to triumph, with her eighty-two 
years. What swelled her heart with regal pride was 
that on this occasion she made the conquest of 
Plassans for the third time, for she compelled the 
whole town, all the three quarters, to range them- 
selves around her, to form an escort for her, and to 
applaud her as a benefactress. For, of course, there 
had to be present lady patronesses, chosen from 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


461 


among the noblest ladies of the Quartier St. Marc ; 
a delegation from the societies of workingwomen 
of the old quarter, and, finally, the most distin- 
guished residents of the new town, advocate's, 
notaries, physicians, without counting the common 
people, a stream of people dressed in their Sunday 
clothes, crowding there eagerly, as to a festival. 
And in the midst of this supreme triumph she was 
perhaps most proud — she, one of the queens of the 
Second Empire, the widow who mourned with so 
much dignity the fallen government — in having con- 
quered the young republic itself, obliging it, in the 
person of the sub-perfect, to come and salute her 
and thank her. At first there had been question 
only of a discourse of the mayor; but it was known 
with certainty, since the previous day, that the sub- 
perfect also would speak. From so great a distance 
Clotilde could distinguish only a moving crowd of 
black coats and light dresses, under the scorching 
sun. Then there was a distant sound of music, the 
music of the amateur band of the town, the sonorous 
strains of whose brass instruments were borne to her 
at intervals on the breeze. 

She left the window and went and opened the 
large oaken press to put away in it the linen that 
had remained on the table. It was in this press, 
formerly so full of the doctor’s manuscripts, and 
now empty, that she kept the baby’s wardrobe. It 
yawned open, vast, seemingly bottomless, and on 
the- large bare shelves there was nothing but the 
baby linen, the little waists, the little caps, the little 


462 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


socks, all the fine clothing, the down of the bird still 
in the nest. Where so many thoughts had been 
stored up, where a man’s unremitting labor for 
thirty years had accumulated in an overflowing heap 
of papers, there was now only a baby’s clothing, 
only the first garments which would protect it for 
an hour, as it were, and which very soon it could no 
longer use. The vastness of the antique press 
seemed brightened and all refreshed by them. 

When Clotilde had arranged the wrappers and the 
waists upon a shelf, she perceived a large envelope 
containing the fragments of the documents which 
she had placed there after she had rescued them 
from the fire. And she remembered a request 
which Dr. Ramond had come only the day before to 
make her — that she would see if there remained 
among this debris any fragment of importance hav- 
ing a scientific interest. He was inconsolable for the 
loss of the precious manuscripts which the master 
had bequeathed to him. Immediately after the 
doctor’s death he had made an attempt to write from 
memory his last talk, that summary of vast theories 
expounded by the dying man with so heroic a 
serenity ; but he could recall only parts of it. He 
would have needed complete notes, observations 
made from day to day, the results obtained, and the 
laws formulated. The loss was irreparable, the task 
was to be begun over again, and he lamented having 
only indications ; he said that it would be at least 
twenty years before science could make up the loss, 
and take up and utilize the ideas of the solitary 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 463 

pioneer whose labors a wicked and imbecile catas- 
trophe had destroyed. 

The genealogical tree, the only document that had 
remained intact, was attached to the envelope, and 
Clotilde carried the whole to the table beside the 
cradle. After she had taken out the fragments, one 
by one, she found, what she had been already almost 
certain of, that not a single entire page of manu- 
script remained, not a single complete note having 
any meaning. There were only fragments of docu- 
ments, scraps of half-burned and blackened paper, 
without sequence or connection. But as she ex- 
amined them, these incomplete phrases, these words 
half consumed by fire, assumed for her an interest 
which no one else could have understood. She re- 
membered the night of the storm, and the phrases 
completed themselves, the beginning of a word 
evoked before her persons and histories. Thus her 
eye fell on Maxime’s name, and she reviewed the life 
of this brother who had remained a stranger to her, 
and whose death, two months before, had left her 
almost indifferent. Then, a half-burned scrap con- 
taining her father’s name gave her an uneasy feeling, 
for she believed that her father had obtained pos- 
session of the fortune and the house on the avenue 
of the Bois de Boulogne through the good offices of 
his hairdresser’s niece, the innocent Rose, repaid, no 
doubt, by a generous percentage. Then she met 
with other names, that of her uncle Eugene, the 
former vice emperor, now dead, the cur£ of Saint- 
Eutrope, who, she had been told yesterday, was 


464 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


dying of consumption. And each fragment became 
animated in this way; the execrable family lived 
again in these scraps, these black ashes, where were 
now only disconnected words. 

Then Clotilde had the curiosity to unfold the 
genealogical tree and spread it out upon the table. 
A strong emotion gained on her ; she was deeply 
affected by these relics; and when she read once 
more the notes added in pencil by Pascal, a few 
moments before his death, tears rose to her eyes. 
With what courage he had written down the date of 
his death ! And what despairing regret for life one 
divined in the trembling words announcing the birth 
of the child ! The tree ascended, spread out its 
branches, unfolded its leaves, and she remained for 
a long time contemplating it, saying to herself that 
all the work of the master was to be found here in 
the classified records of this family tree. She 
could still hear certain of his words commenting 
on each hereditary case, she recalled his lessons. 
But the children, above all, interested her; she read 
again and again the notes on the leaves which bore 
their names. The doctor’s colleague in Noumea, to 
whom he had written for information about the 
child born of the marriage of the convict Etienne, 
had at last made up his mind to answer ; but the 
only information he gave was in regard to the sex — 
it was a girl, he said, and she seemed to be healthy. 
Octave Mouret had come near losing his daughter, 
who had always been very frail, while his little boy 
continued to enjoy superb health. But the chosen 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


465 


abode of vigorous health and of extraordinary 
fecundity was still the house of Jean, at Valqueyras, 
whose wife had had two children in three years and 
was about to have a third. The nestlings throve in 
the sunshine, in the heart of a fertile country, while 
the father sang as he guided his plow, and the 
mother at home cleverly made the soup and kept the 
children in order. There was enough new vitality 
and industry there to make another family, a whole 
race. Clotilde fancied at this moment that she 
could hear Pascal’s cry : “ Ah, our family ! what is 
it going to be, in what kind of being will it end?” 
And she fell again into a reverie, looking at the tree 
sending its latest branches into the future. Who 
could tell whence the healthy branch would spring? 
Perhaps the great and good man so long awaited 
was germinating there. 

A slight cry drew Clotilde from her reflections. 
The muslin curtain of the cradle seemed to become 
animate. It was the child who had wakened up and 
was moving about and calling to her. She at once 
took him out of the cradle and held him up gayly, 
that he might bathe in the golden light of the setting 
sun. But he was insensible to the beauty of the 
closing day ; his little vacant eyes, still full of sleep, 
turned away from the vast sky, while he opened 
wide his rosy and ever hungry mouth, like a bird 
opening its beak. And he cried so loud, he had 
wakened up so ravenous, that she decided to nurse 
him again. Besides, it was his hour; it would soon 
be three hours since she had last nursed him, 


4 66 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


Clotilde sat down again beside the table. She 
took him on her lap, but he was not very good, cry- 
ing louder and louder, growing more and more 
impatient ; and she looked at him with a smile while 
she unfastened her dress, showing her round, slender 
throat. Already the child knew, and raising himself 
he felt with his lips for the breast. When she 
placed it in his mouth he gave a little grunt of satis- 
faction ; he threw himself upon her with the fine, 
voracious appetite of a young gentleman who was 
determined to live. At first he had clutched the 
breast with his little free hand, as if to show that it 
was his, to defend it and to guard it. Then, in the 
joy of the warm stream that filled his throat he 
raised his little arm straight up, like a flag. And 
Clotilde kept her unconscious smile, seeing him so 
healthy, so rosy, and so plump, thriving so well on 
the nourishment he drew from her. During the 
first few weeks she had suffered from a fissure, and 
even now her breast was sensitive ; but she smiled, 
notwithstanding, with that peaceful look which 
mothers wear, happy in giving their milk as they 
would give their blood. 

When she had unfastened her dress, showing her 
bare throat and breast, in the solitude and silence of 
the study, another of her mysteries, one of her 
sweetest and most hidden secrets, was revealed at 
the same time — the slender necklace with the seven 
pearls, the seven fine, milky stars which the master 
had put around her neck on a day of misery, in his 
mania for giving. Since it had been there no one 


bOCTOk PASCAL. 


467 


else had seen it. It seemed as if she guarded it 
with as much modesty as if it were a part of her 
flesh, so simple, so pure, so childlike. And all the 
time the child was nursing she alone looked at it in 
a dreamy reverie, moved by the tender memory of 
the kisses whose warm perfume it still seemed to 
keep. 

A burst of distant music seemed to surprise Clo- 
tilde. She turned her head and looked across the 
fields gilded by the oblique rays of the sun. Ah, 
yes ! the ceremony, the laying of the corner stone 
yonder ! Then she turned her eyes again on the 
child, and she gave herself up to the delight of see- 
ing him with so fine an appetite. She had drawn 
forward a little bench, to raise one of her knees, 
resting her foot upon it, and she leaned one shoulder 
against the table, beside the tree and the blackened 
fragments of the envelopes. Her thoughts wandered 
away in an infinitely sweet reverie, while she felt the 
best part of herself, the pure milk, flowing softly, 
making more and more her own the dear being she 
had borne. The child had come, the redeemer, 
perhaps. The bells rang, the three wise men had 
set out, followed by the peoples, by rejoicing nature, 
smiling on the infant in its swaddling clothes. She, 
the mother, while he drank life in long draughts, was 
dreaming already of his future. What would he be 
when she should have made him tall and strong, 
giving herself to him entirely ? A scientist, perhaps, 
who would reveal to the world something of the 
eternal truth ; or a great captain, who would confer 


4 68 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


glory on his country; or, still better, one of those 
shepherds of the people who appease the passions 
• and bring about the reign of justice. She saw him, 
in fancy beautiful, good, and powerful. Hers was 
the dream of every mother — the conviction that she 
had brought the expected Messiah into the world ; 
and there was in this hope, in this obstinate belief, 
which every mother has in the certain triumph of 
her child, the hope which itself makes life, the belief 
which gives humanity the ever renewed strength to 
live still. 

What would the child be ? She looked at him, 
trying to discover whom he 'resembled. He had 
certainly his father’s brow and eyes, there was some- 
thing noble and strong in the breadth of the head. 
She saw a resemblance to herself, too, in his fine 
mouth and his delicate chin. Then, with secret un- 
easiness, she sought a resemblance to the others, the 
terrible ancestors, all those whose names were there 
inscribed on the tree, unfolding its growth of heredi- 
tary leaves. Was it this one, or this, or yet this 
other, whom he would resemble ? She grew calm, 
however, she could not but hope, her heart swelled 
with eternal hope. The faith in life which the mas- 
ter had implanted in her kept her brave and stead- 
fast. What did misery, suffering, and wickedness 
matter! Health was in universal labor, in the effort 
made, in the power which fecundates and which pro- 
duces. The work was good when the child blessed 
love. Then hope bloomed anew, in spite of the 
open wounds, the dark picture of human shame. It 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


469 


was life perpetuated, tried anew, life which we can 
never weary of believing good, since we live it so 
eagerly, with all its injustice and suffering. 

Clotilde had glanced involuntarily at the ancestral 
tree spread out beside her. Yes, the menace was 
there — so many crimes, so much filth, side by side 
with so many tears, and so much patient goodness; 
so extraordinary a mixture of the best and the most 
vile, a humanity in little, with all its defects and all 
its struggles. It was a question whether it would 
not be better that a thunderbolt should come and 
destroy all this corrupt and miserable ant-hill. And 
after so many terrible Rougons, so many vile Mac- 
quarts, still another had been born, Life did not 
fear to create another of them, in the brave defiance 
of its eternity. It continued its work, propagated 
itself according to its laws, indifferent to theories, 
marching on in its endless labor. Even at the risk 
of making monsters, it must of necessity create, 
since, in spite of all it creates, it never wearies of creat- 
ing in the hope, no doubt, that the healthy and the 
good will one day come. Life, life, which flows like 
a torrent, which continues its work, beginning it 
over and over again, without pause, to the unknown 
end ! life in which we bathe, life with its infinity of 
contrary currents, always in motion, and vast as a 
boundless sea ! 

A transport of maternal fervor thrilled Clotilde's 
heart, and she smiled, seeing the little voracious 
mouth drinking her life. It was a prayer, an invo- 
cation, to the unknown child, as to the unknown 


470 


DOCTOR RASCAL. 


God ! To the child of the future, to the genius, 
perhaps, that was to be, to the Messiah that the 
coming century awaited, who would deliver the peo- 
ple from their doubt and their suffering ! Since the 
nation was to be regenerated, had he not come for 
this work ? He would make the experiment anew, 
he would raise up walls, give certainty to those who 
were in doubt, he would build the city of justice, 
where the sole law of labor would insure happiness. 
In troublous times prophets were to be expected — 
at least let him not be the Antichrist, the destroyer, 
the beast foretold in the Apocalypse — who would 
purge, the earth of its wickedness, when this should 
become too great. And life would go on in spite 
of everything, only it would be necessary to wait 
for other myriads of years before the other unknown 
child, the benefactor, should appear. 

But the child had drained her right breast, and, 
as he was growing angry, Clotilde turned him round 
and gave him the left. Then she began to smile, 
feeling the caress of his greedy little lips. At all 
events she herself was hope. A mother nursing, 
was she not the image of the world continued and 
saved ? She bent over, she looked into his limpid 
eyes, which opened joyously, eager for the light. 
What did the child say to her that she felt her heart 
beat more quickly under the breast which he was 
draining ? To what cause would he give his blood 
when he should be a man, strong with all the milk 
which he would have drunk ? Perhaps he said 
nothing to her, perhaps he already deceived her, 


DOCTOR PASCAL. 


471 


and yet she was so happy, so full of perfect confi- 
dence in him. 

Again there was a distant burst of music. This 
must be the apotheosis, the moment when Grand- 
mother F£licite, with her silver trowel, laid the first 
stone of the monument to the glory of the Rougons. 
The vast blue sky, gladdened by the Sunday festivi- 
ties, rejoiced. And in the warm silence, in the soli- 
tary peace of the workroom, Clotilde smiled at the 
child, who was still nursing, his little arm held 
straight up in the air, like a signal flag of life. 


THE END. 




























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